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Color It Heather

© Ann Garner

One of the fabric surfaces most charming to the eye and pleasant to the touch is a heathery woolen cloth. Heather is a subtle variegation in color usually combined with a softness in texture. Now let me explain the term "woolen." Woolen thread is spun in a way that some of the ends of the individual fibers from the sheep's coat protrude from the core of the spun thread, i. e., the thread is soft and fuzzy. This technique also makes a warm garment as a result of the fuzz trapping air molecules thus insulating the wearer from the ambient temperature and preserving his body temperature. The drawback is that when it traps air around the body, it feels warm and somewhat scratchy when worn in Summer.

But in colder seasons and climates, this woolen texture conveys more of a feeling of warmth to the wearer than do smoother (worsted) garments of the same thickness. That is the appeal of the woolen garment to the sense of touch.

The appeal to the eye is a result of the heathery effect that is easy to achieve through several design techniques employed during the spinning of the yarn. Handspinning a heathery woolen or semi-woolen yarn on a spinning wheel produces a great variety of designer yarns for the textile artists throughout the world. Almost every yarn shop -- whether brick and mortar or online -- features handspun semi-woolen yarns. So let's talk about the various ways that handspinners can produce a heathery look and feel in their yarns.

Well, the simplest way is to spin the fleece of a sheep that has subtle variegation in the natural pigmentation of its coat. Shetland sheep and Jacob sheep are two traditional wool sheep that offer some fleeces with this possibility. Two modern breeds offer this kind of coloration in almost every fleece in the annual clip (shearing): California Red and California Variegated Mutant (CVM). Of these two, only the CVM fleece is soft enough for under-the-coat garments. The California Red sheep fleece has relatively longer fibers, hairier and harsher, but very easy to spin by hand. Most California Red fleeces are mauve with brownish flecks, creating perfect yarn for outermost garments or carpets and floor cushions and furnishings with a permanent heathery surface.

Even most black, gray or brown fleeces offer a yarn designer the possibility of creating heathery effects. Few fleeces will have the same coloration on all areas of the sheep's body. If the spinner combines different locks of fiber from these different areas, then spins them in a woolen or semi-woolen style, a yarn with a somewhat variegated appearance will result.