Mottled Merino

Casual and relaxed clothes benefit from using a casual and relaxed fabric. Wool, although well known for its clean and pristine looks, is versatile enough to take on a mottled or vintage appearance by virtue of its ability to felt.

With Mottled Merino a special yarn has been created by randomly mixing untreated and anti-felt treated regions within the yarn to create a highly textured and mottled aspect after milling.

The technology

Two technologies are available which give similar results:

1. Yarn Printing: A normal untreated wool yarn is printed
with a polyurethane easy care polymer according to a randomised pattern using a special computer controlled continuous yarn pad-dyeing machine.

2. Fancy Spinning: Two separate types (untreated wool and easy care treated wool) of worsted roving are fed into the drafting zone of the spinning machine at the same time. Computer-controlled feed-rollers vary the proportion of each roving between 0% and 100% whilst maintaining the correct overall roving weight, and thus yarn count.

The resulting yarns contain randomly distributed regions of potentially shrinkable wool. During wet finishing a random distribution of felted and un-felted regions develops within the fabric which creates surface distortions, and a casual look.

The features

• A wide range of effects from highly textured boiled looks through to subtle creasing can be created depending on the overall proportion of treated to untreated areas in the yarn
• The yarns have random distribution of felting potential so are not prone to phasing (step-wise patterns of felting) in knitted garments
• Colour can be included with the pad treatment if desired
• The feature is inherent in the yarn so the knitter does not have to organise garment printing
• The potential problem of felting is turned into a virtue
• The effect is unique to fibres possessing a scale structure.

For further information about Mottled Merino contact your local Woolmark Company office.