Yarns: Assignment

PURPOSE
This assignment is supposed to be fun and experimental, but it may also be difficult for some students, especially for those who are not used to working with their hands. Give yourself time and be patient, and I think you’ll both enjoy it and learn from it.
The general idea is to learn first hand what a variety of different kinds of yarns are by making some yourself. As you should understand from my lecture and the Yarns chapter in Fabric Science, yarn properties will help you to understand fabric, which will help you to understand garments.
It is absolutely possible with practice to make very beautiful yarns by hand with a spindle. I don’t expect that you will become master spinners with this assignment, but with practice you should be able to make yarns that could be usable for hand knitting, or if you have better skills, finer yarns that would be more suitable for weaving. Thicker yarns are commonly found in knitted garments (sweaters, scarves, hats) for several reasons: thick yarns produce fabric quickly; they are interesting, they are warm, even if they are bulky, because knit structures (the looping of yarn around itself) can be made loose enough to easily accommodate the yarn.
You sometimes see thick yarns in woven fabric, but those yarns make a thick or stiff fabric, so most yarns in woven fabrics are relatively thin. Many students in the past have been able to make quite nice quite thin yarns: try it!!

INSTRUCTIONS
It’s important with this assignment to view video instructions, and then experiment. I have provided three links to people whose methods I like, but feel free to explore the internet for other instructional videos.
http://www.joyofhandspinning.com (Links to an external site.)
http://www.theartofmegan.com/yarn (Links to an external site.)
http://www.tricotin.com/fiche60_eng.htm (Links to an external site.)
1. Produce a collection of at least 10 yarns. Each yarn should be at least 12 inches inches long so that it a) really looks like a yarn and b) you can show that you’ve practiced. You should try just twisting the wool by hand (no spindle) or rolling fiber against your leg (no spindle) to get a feeling of it the fiber, the when you’re ready, start using the spindle as in above videos.
I have asked you to use wool for this assignment because its crimp and surface scales make it the easiest fiber to spin, but you are free to incorporate other fibers (from cotton or poly puffs, pet hair, human hair, bits of old fabric or existing yarns, etc., if you’d like.
The challenge will be attaining an even, thin yarn—a lumpy thick one is easy.
2. You must include in your collection example yarns that show each of the following characteristics. Not every yarn has to have all of these characteristics–that would be impossible obviously. Somewhere in your collection you have to show at least one yarn that has these qualities:
z-twist (in other words, at least one yarn with a z-twist)
s-twist (in other words, at least one yarn with an s-twist)
a variety of thickness: you should have a range from as thin as you can make it, to a bulky one.
a variety of twists per inch (check Fabric Science): this does not need to be exact: I’m looking for yarns that could be called soft, medium, hard, and very hard (crepe). The less twist a yarns has, the softer (and weaker) it is. The more twist it has, the harder (and stronger) it is. Of course a fabric made with low twist yarns will be softer, but weaker, the inverse is true for harder twist yarns.
single (also called singles–means a yarn that is only one yarn, not plied)
2-ply (the singles should both be either Z or S and then twisted together in the opposite direction)
3-ply (the singles should all be either Z or S and then twisted together in the opposite direction)
slub yarn (slubs are decorative lumps in the yarn) http://www.tricotin.com/fiche60_eng.htm (Links to an external site.)

3. SET THE TWIST after you’ve spun your yarns, or they will come undone eventually. There are several ways to do this, but I like this method:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDX5vvgrgA (Links to an external site.)
The point is you have to either get your yarns wet in hot water, then put them into cold water, then dry them, or you can try steaming them with a steam iron.
4. Present your work with clear, close up pictures of your collection with captions explaining the yarns by characteristics, and process.

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