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Processing Wool

1. Only certain strains of NZ Merino produce wool of a fine enough character, and with the right crimp, tensile strength and length to be used to make superfine performance merino jersey fabric.

2. Cleaning: shorn fleeces must be cleaned before in can be processed into wool yarn. Vegetable matter and manure must be removed. In poor quality fleece this can be as much as 50% of the weight is not wool

3. Sorting: The back and neck areas produce the best quality wool. Wool from the back end, legs and sometimes belly is too full of manure to use. These are "dags" and are removed before washing the fleece.

4. Fleeces are then sorted into the various types: fine to coarse, short to long. The more short and coarse (over 22 micron) fibres left in to be spun, the cheaper the yarn is to produce. Fabrics made from these yarns have a high tendency to pill, causing itching.

5. Washing & scouring: grease is removed from the fleece.

6. Willowing: this opens up the wool and loosen the fibres prior to carding.

7. Carding: The wool fibres are put through a combing machine that combs the wool many times by transferring it bck and forth from one carding drum to another.

8. Roving: the final step in the carding process divides the web of fleece into small strips called pencil rovings. For a worsted yarn needed for merino jersey and other fabrics, the fibres must be lined up parallel prior to spinning.

9. Spinning: The roving, as it comes off the carder has no twist. It's held together by the oil and natural hooks that exist on the wool fibre. Superfine and Fine Merino fibres have far fewer of these hooks than standard wool, so greater care has to be taken at this stage. The spinning machines put a twist on the roving and turn it into yarn.

10. Knitting: Most merino fabrics are made using a single yarn. Our performance merino fabric is made using a double yarn, giving the fabric extra stability and smoothness. Jersey fabrics made with a single yarn can be prone to skewing and twisting.

11. Dyeing: The most usual dyeing process and the one used in China is called a "hard process". Whilst good for cellulose-based textiles and synthetics, it can cause merino wool to become brittle; the fibres can break and this causes pilling and itching. In New Zealand a different dyeing process - the "soft process" is used specially for merino wool.

12. CMT - "Cut, Make, Trim": This is the process of making garments. Crucially, merino jersey, because of its natural elasticity, should only be cut in small batches to prevent skewing and stretching. Our manufacturing partnerlays out no more than 8 layers of fabric at a time, letting the layers rest anything from 12 to 24 hours before cutting to allow the fabric torelax and recover. Other manufacturers may cut anything up to 20 layers at any one time, and may not let the layers rest and recover at all.

13. Once the layers have been set up, they must be moved down to the cutting machines. If the layers are pulled down or moved on rollers or a conveyor belt, again the fabric may stretch and skew. Our manufacturer has specialised cutting tables that direct jets of air up under the layers so that they can be "floated" down with the minimum of disturbance to the layers of fabric.

14. Quality Control: Over 35% of all goods made in China are rejected on delivery as faulty or substandard. Chinese factories work on bulk, pouring out thousands of garments. Very little attention is paid to quality control when a product is being produced cheaply.

Merino Jersey

There are three types of fabric that wool is used for:

• Flat woven fabric as used for suiting
• Knitted fabric produced by consistent interlooping of yarns in the jersey stitch to produces a fabric with a smooth, flat face, and a more textured, but uniform back. It may be produced on either circular or flat weft knitting machines.
• Felted fabric

Most merino jersey is made for the fashion industry. This is usually a single jersey fabric and in the lighter weights of grams per square metre. i.e. under 180 gsms is particularly prone to "spiralling", and has limited stability and durability. It is the simplest knit fabric and the cheapest to manufacture. This is a weft knit fabric in which a layer of loops are formed using a single yarn.

One of the drawbacks of single jersey is that it can skew easily when cut. This is "spiralling". You can often see this effect on the side seams of cotton T-shirts that appear straight when new but twisted once washed. Unless great care is taken, this can happen to merino single jersey too.

Only Designer Textile's MAPP Merino Advanced Performance Program double jersey fabric is specifically engineered for outdoor activity use. The doube jersey construction gives it the natural elasticity required for a performance/activity garment.

We think this is by far the best merino jersey fabric, and the one we use for all our Taranaki 190 range. Double jersey fabric is a weft knit fabric in which two layers of loops are formed that cannot be separated. A double knit machine, which has two complete sets of needles, is required for this construction. The result is a much smoother and more stable fabric that still retains elasticity but is far less prone to skewing.

Layering Design - style or function? Multi-climate merino

Technical Characteristics of Merino

Judging quality magnification images of merino fabric Electron Microscope images of merino fibre

Processing Wool

The "Itch" Factor Textile Tests

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