Pills! We've all had to deal with them at one time or another. No, not those huge horrid tasting things doctors expect you to swallow. These pills are the tight, tiny little balls of fiber that appear on our clothing, popping up out of nowhere, sticking so tightly that we're certain they've been super glued in place. Where, oh where do these things come from and can they be prevented?

The answer to where those pills come from is easy - they are caused by short staple fibers. And yes, they can be prevented. The first step in preventing them is in understanding where those short stapled fibers come from. Let's start by defining exactly what a pill is. A pill is a little mass of fibers, formed by short fibers which partially work their way out of the structure of the yarn and which adhere together due to the scales of the fiber catching against each other thus trapping the fibers in place. Pills are held to the surface of the fabric by the portion of the fiber which remains within the structure of the yarn.

Since wool fabrics and yarns are the biggest offenders when it comes to pilling, let's limit this discussion to wool fibers. Note however that the same principles apply to other fibers, with the exception of the starting point of the problem. With wool, the starting point of the pilling problem lies with our good friend the sheep. Sheep have follicles in their skin and each individual wool fiber grows in it's own individual follicle. But each follicle does not have the same rate of growth and some follicles may be dormant at times, starting their growth cycle later than do other follicles. This means that there are individual fibers of varying lengths some short, others long within any given staple of fleece. Yet, the staple will appear to contain fibers that are all approximately the same length. There is also a variation in staple length of wool over the body of the sheep. For example, the staple length grown in the neck area may be longer than the staple length of fleece from the back area. The tendency of the yarn to pill starts when the longer fibers and the shorter fibers are mingled together in the spinning preparation.

Spinners have a high degree of control over the intermixing of long and short fibers provided that the starting point is the raw fleece. First, skirt well, removing obviously shorter stapled areas, such as belly wool. Then examine the fleece with a careful eye towards staple length. Select areas of matching length to use for your project.

The next step in preventing pilling is to remove the shorter fibers within the staples from the longer ones. Combing will remove the shorter fibers, leaving the longer ones nicely prepared for spinning a good worsted yarn. Worsted yarns do not pill because they contain only fibers of a similar length and are compactly spun.

But what if you want to spin a nice, soft woolen yarn? Again, the first step must be removing the short fibers. This takes a bit more preparation work since the short fibers must be removed before carding. Mount one wool hand card to use as a comb. This can be done by using a C clap to clamp the hand card to a convenient spot near your drum carder. Take a small staple length and hold it at the butt end and draw the tip end through the teeth of the hand card. Then reverse your hold on the lock and draw the butt end through the hand card. The shorter fibers will remain on the card. Set the longer fibers aside for further carding. When spinning the prepared fibers woolen, use the traditional long draw to spin a less compacted, fluffier yarn which traps more air within the structure of the yarn. It is the shorter fibers within compacted woolen yarns that work there way out of the structure of the yarn and form pills.

If you have clothing or decorative items that have pilled over the years, our BellaOnline Knitting Editor, Marge Colletta , has written an interesting and informative article on how to best deal with the problem. To read her article, and many other interesting information on knitting, click on this link:

(Dealing With Pills)