Worsted ( or ) is a high-quality type of wool
yarn
Yarn is a long continuous length of interlocked fibres, used in sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery, ropemaking, and the production of textiles. Thread is a type of yarn intended for sewing by hand or machine. Modern manufact ...
, the
fabric
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
made from this yarn, and a
yarn weight Yarn weight refers to the thickness of yarn used by knitters, weavers, crocheters and other fiber artists.
Importance
Changing yarn weight or needle size can have a significant impact on the finished project, so standardized systems have been spre ...
category. The name derives from
Worstead
Worstead is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It lies south of North Walsham, north of Wroxham, and north of Norwich. The village is served by Worstead railway station on the Bittern Line. For the purposes of local ...
, a village in the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
county of
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
. That village, together with
North Walsham
North Walsham is a market town and civil parish in Norfolk, England, within the North Norfolk district.
Demography
The civil parish has an area of and in the 2011 census had a population of 12,634. For the purposes of local government, the pa ...
and
Aylsham
Aylsham ( or ) is a historic market town and civil parish on the River Bure in north Norfolk, England, nearly north of Norwich. The river rises near Melton Constable, upstream from Aylsham and continues to Great Yarmouth and the North Sea, ...
, formed a manufacturing centre for yarn and cloth in the 12th century, when pasture
enclosure
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
and
liming rendered the East Anglian soil too rich for the older agrarian sheep breeds. In the same period, many weavers from the
County of Flanders
The County of Flanders was a historic territory in the Low Countries.
From 862 onwards, the counts of Flanders were among the original twelve peers of the Kingdom of France. For centuries, their estates around the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypr ...
moved to Norfolk. "Worsted" yarns/fabrics are distinct from
woollen
Woolen (American English) or woollen (Commonwealth English) is a type of yarn made from carded wool. Woolen yarn is soft, light, stretchy, and full of air. It is thus a good insulator, and makes a good knitting yarn. Woolen yarn is in contrast t ...
s (though both are made from sheep's wool): the former is considered stronger, finer, smoother, and harder than the latter.
Worsted was made from the long-staple pasture wool from
sheep breeds
This is a list of breeds of domestic sheep. Domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are partially derived from mouflon (''Ovis gmelini'') stock, and have diverged sufficiently to be considered a different species.
Domestic sheep breeds
Sorted alphabetica ...
such as
Teeswaters,
Old Leicester Longwool and
Romney Marsh
Romney Marsh is a sparsely populated wetland area in the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers about . The Marsh has been in use for centuries, though its inhabitants commonly suffered from malaria until the ...
. Pasture wool was not
card Card or The Card may refer to:
* Various types of plastic cards:
**By type
***Magnetic stripe card
*** Chip card
*** Digital card
**By function
***Payment card
****Credit card
**** Debit card
****EC-card
****Identity card
****European Health Insur ...
ed; instead it was washed, gilled and
comb
A comb is a tool consisting of a shaft that holds a row of teeth for pulling through the hair to clean, untangle, or style it. Combs have been used since prehistoric times, having been discovered in very refined forms from settlements dating ba ...
ed (using heated long-tooth metal combs), oiled and finally spun. When woven, worsteds were scoured but not
fulled.
Worsted wool fabric is typically used in the making of tailored garments such as suits, as opposed to
woollen
Woolen (American English) or woollen (Commonwealth English) is a type of yarn made from carded wool. Woolen yarn is soft, light, stretchy, and full of air. It is thus a good insulator, and makes a good knitting yarn. Woolen yarn is in contrast t ...
wool, which is used for knitted items such as sweaters. In tropical-weight worsteds, the use of tightly spun, straightened wool combined with a looser weave permits air to flow through the fabric. Worsted is also used for
carpet
A carpet is a textile floor covering typically consisting of an upper layer of pile attached to a backing. The pile was traditionally made from wool, but since the 20th century synthetic fibers such as polypropylene, nylon, or polyester hav ...
s,
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
,
hosiery
Hosiery, also referred to as legwear, describes garments worn directly on the feet and legs. The term originated as the collective term for products of which a maker or seller is termed a hosier; and those products are also known generically as h ...
,
glove
A glove is a garment covering the hand. Gloves usually have separate sheaths or openings for each finger and the thumb.
If there is an opening but no (or a short) covering sheath for each finger they are called fingerless gloves. Fingerless glov ...
s and
baize
Baize is a coarse woollen (or in cheaper variants cotton) cloth, similar in texture to felt, but more durable.
History
A mid-17th-century English ditty—much quoted in histories of ale and beer brewing in England—refers to 1525:
Hops, her ...
.
Manufacture
![Hudson Worsted Company mill, March 2022](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Hudson_Worsted_Company_mill%2C_March_2022.JPG)
Worsted cloth, archaically also known as
stuff
Stuff, stuffed, and stuffing may refer to:
*Physical matter
*General, unspecific things, or entities
Arts, media, and entertainment
Books
*''Stuff'' (1997), a novel by Joseph Connolly (author), Joseph Connolly
*''Stuff'' (2005), a book by Jere ...
, is lightweight and has a coarse texture. The
weave is usually
twill
Twill is a type of textile weave with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs. It is one of three fundamental types of textile weaves along with plain weave and satin. It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads then under ...
or plain. Twilled fabrics such as
whipcord
Whipcord is the name for either a fabric or a form of braided cord.
Fabric
The fabric whipcord is a strong worsted or cotton fabric made of hard-twisted yarns with a diagonal cord or rib. The weave used for whipcord is a steep-angled twill, esse ...
,
gabardine
Gabardine
Burberry advertisement for waterproof gabardine suit, 1908
Gabardine is a durable twill worsted wool, a tightly woven fabric originally waterproof and used to make suits, overcoats, trousers, uniforms, windbreakers, outerwear and o ...
and
serge Serge may refer to:
*Serge (fabric), a type of twill fabric
*Serge (llama) (born 2005), a llama in the Cirque Franco-Italien and internet meme
*Serge (name), a masculine given name (includes a list of people with this name)
*Serge (post), a hitchi ...
are often made from worsted yarn. Worsted fabric made from wool has a natural recovery, meaning that it is resilient and quickly returns to its natural shape, but non-glossy worsted will shine with use or abrasion.
Worsted and woollens
Though both made of wool, worsted and woollens undergo different manufacturing steps resulting in significantly different cloths. In worsteds, which undergo more spinning steps, the natural crimp of the wool fiber is removed in the process of spinning the yarn while it is retained in woolens, and woollens are produced with short-staple yarns while worsted cloths need longer staple length. When woven, the yarns in worsted cloth lie parallel. Woollen materials are soft and bulky with fuzzy surfaces, while worsted is smoother. There are different terms in use for describing the
softness
In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to localized plastic deformation induced by either mechanical indentation or abrasion (mechanical), abrasion. In general, different materials differ in their hardn ...
of textile materials. The wool trade term for it is ''handle'', with ''good handling'' cloth being soft to the touch, while ''poor handling'' suggests the material's harsh hand feel.
Technique and preparation
![Tess Designer Yarns Worsted Merino](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Tess_Designer_Yarns_Worsted_Merino.jpg)
The essential feature of worsted yarn is straight,
parallel
Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Computing
* Parallel algorithm
* Parallel computing
* Parallel metaheuristic
* Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel
* Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of IBM ...
fibre
Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...
s. Originally, long, fine
staple wool was
spun
''Spun'' is a 2002 American black comedy crime drama film directed by Jonas Åkerlund from an original screenplay by William De Los Santos and Creighton Vero, based on three days of De Los Santos's life in the Eugene, Oregon, drug subculture. The ...
to create worsted yarn; today, other long
fibre
Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...
s are also used.
Many spinners differentiate between worsted preparation and
worsted spinning. Worsted preparation refers to the way the fibre is prepared before spinning, using ginning machines which force the fibre staples to lie parallel to each other. Once these fibres have been made into a top, they are then combed to remove the short fibres. The long fibres are combined in subsequent gilling machines to again make the fibres parallel. This produces overlapping untwisted strands called
sliver
Sliver may refer to:
Entertainment
*Sliver (novel), ''Sliver'' (novel), a 1991 novel by Ira Levin
**Sliver (film), ''Sliver'' (film), a 1993 film adaptation of the novel
**Sliver (soundtrack), ''Sliver'' (soundtrack), the soundtrack to the 1993 fi ...
s. Worsted spinning refers to using a worsted technique, which produces a smooth yarn in which the fibres lie parallel.
Roving
A roving is a long and narrow bundle of fiber. Rovings are produced during the process of making spun yarn from wool fleece, raw cotton, or other fibres. Their main use is as fibre prepared for spinning, but they may also be used for specialised ...
and
wool top
Topmaking mills make ''wool top'', a semi-processed product from raw wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as ...
are often used to spin worsted yarn. Many hand spinners buy their fibre in roving or top form. Top and roving are ropelike in appearance, in that they can be thick and long. While some mills put a slight twist in the rovings they make, it is not enough twist to be a yarn. The fibres in top and rovings all lie parallel to one another along the length, which makes top ideal for spinning worsted yarns.
''Worsted-spun'' yarns, used to create worsted fabric, are spun from fibres that have been
combed, to ensure that the fibres all run the same direction, butt-end (for wool, the end that was cut in
shearing
Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or ...
the sheep) to tip, and remain parallel. A
short draw
Fat draw is the spinning technique used to create worsted yarns. It is spun from combed roving, slivers or wool top – anything with the fibers all lined up parallel to the yarn. It is generally spun from long stapled fibers. Short draw spun ...
is used in spinning worsted fibres (as opposed to a
long draw
Long draw is the spinning (textiles), spinning technique used to create woolen yarns. It is spun from carding, carded rolags. It is generally spun from shorter staple (wool), stapled fibers. Long draw spun yarns are light, lofty, stretchy, soft, ...
).
In short draw
spinning
Spin or spinning most often refers to:
* Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning
* Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis
* Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...
, spun from combed
roving
A roving is a long and narrow bundle of fiber. Rovings are produced during the process of making spun yarn from wool fleece, raw cotton, or other fibres. Their main use is as fibre prepared for spinning, but they may also be used for specialised ...
,
sliver
Sliver may refer to:
Entertainment
*Sliver (novel), ''Sliver'' (novel), a 1991 novel by Ira Levin
**Sliver (film), ''Sliver'' (film), a 1993 film adaptation of the novel
**Sliver (soundtrack), ''Sliver'' (soundtrack), the soundtrack to the 1993 fi ...
or
wool top
Topmaking mills make ''wool top'', a semi-processed product from raw wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as ...
, the spinners keep their hands very close to each other. The fibres are held fanned out in one hand while the other hand pulls a small number from the mass. The twist is kept between the second hand and the wheel—there is never any twist between the two hands.
Weight
According to the Craft Yarn Council, the term "Worsted Weight", also known as "Afghan",
"Aran", or simply "Medium", refers to a particular weight of yarn that produces a
gauge
Gauge ( or ) may refer to:
Measurement
* Gauge (instrument), any of a variety of measuring instruments
* Gauge (firearms)
* Wire gauge, a measure of the size of a wire
** American wire gauge, a common measure of nonferrous wire diameter, es ...
of 16–20 stitches per 4 inches of stockinette, and is best knitted with 4.5mm to 5.5mm needles (US size 7–9).
The term worsted, in relation to textile yarn weight, is defined as the number of
hanks of yarn, each with a length of 560 yards, that weigh one pound.
Automation
Before the introduction of automatic machinery, there was little difficulty in attaining a straight fibre, as long wool was always used, and the sliver was made up by hand, using combs. The introduction of
Richard Arkwright
Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as t ...
's
water frame
The water frame is a spinning frame that is powered by a water-wheel. Water frames in general have existed since Ancient Egypt times. Richard Arkwright, who patented the technology in 1769, designed a model for the production of cotton thread; t ...
in 1771, and the later introduction of cap and mule spinning machines, required perfectly prepared slivers.
Many
manufactories
A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...
used one or more preparatory combing machines (called ''gill-boxes'') before further processing, to ensure straight fibres and to distribute the
lubricant
A lubricant (sometimes shortened to lube) is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, t ...
evenly.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
Standard Yarn Weight System- Lists recommended needle sizes, gauge, etc., for the various yarn weight categories.
{{Authority control
Spinning
Woven fabrics
Wool
Norfolk
Yarn