What is Pilling?

Good day Crafties! Today I wanted to talk about a concept that I've never touched on here on the blog before and that is: pilling. What is pilling? What makes it happen? And is there any way to avoid it?! Today I'll answer all your burning fiber arts questions so let's dive in!

Light pilling on my original Christmas Sweater (2019)

What is pilling?

We've all experienced this, there's one make that you've knit or crocheted that gets all your love and wear. After a while it starts looking more like your great grandma's shag carpet. Pilling is the act of fibers in a fabric rubbing together rubbing against itself and turning into little knots. Basically, it's friction!

You'll typically find pills on fabric that is knit or crocheted, it happens on loosely spun fibers. So the looser the spin or the the weave in your fiber the more likely you are to get pills.

For example, this sweater is made from a loosely woven 6 weight yarn and has had minimal wear. It's also over 6 years old. When worn, it rubs around on me and it'll even pick up other loose fibers and they all get knotted together. On items that see more wear and tear, like mittens, scarves and blankets these frays eventually turn into little pills or little balls.

So simply put, that's what pilling is!

Pilling also happens when you toss your items into the washing machine or the dryer. If you think about it, our machines put fabric through a lot with all the tumbling and spin cycles. This really fast-tracks all that friction of fibers that makes pilling occur to begin with.

How do you reduce pilling?

There are a few ways that you can reduce the amount of pilling on a on an item or an article of clothing and you can also sort of remove them if you want to be meticulous.

If it's something like a hat, headband or mittens you can gently pull up on them and snip them off with a pair of snips, especially if they're really big pills. But you will find that the fabric tends to thin in that area over time and if you snip off enough pills then sooner or later there's going to be a hole in that spot. There are little devices called "fabric fixers" that came about to help this process on larger items. It's sort of like an electric shaver and you turn it on and you lightly run it over top of the item snips off all of the little pills.

Sometimes pilling is unavoidable especially depending on the kind of fibers that your product is made out of. For example, natural fibers such as wool tends to felt which is like a type of pilling (in my opinion) that can be done purposefully. However in the crochet & knitting world, we tend to want to avoid that.

One of the things you can do to reduce pilling is to not put your makes in the washing machine or the dryer. I personally choose to hand wash knitwear or crochet wear that I really want to avoid messing up. If you hand wash them in the sink or in a big bucket, you can be very careful about squeezing and rubbing it together. Similarly, don't throw things in the dryer, lay your items flat and let them air dry if you have the room. This way, your precious work won't be rubbing against anything else in the dryer and that, too, will help reduce the amount of friction and pilling that happens.

I know right now you're probably like, " Really, Infiniti?! I'm not going to hand wash everything!"

So, one of the ways you can help reduce the amount of pilling on the outside of your clothing for example is to turn it inside out before you toss it in the washing machine or the dryer. That way pilling that is going to occur it's going to happen on the inside of your garment.

Another thing that I do when washing my handmade garments (if I have to put them in the machine) is putting them in a mesh laundry bag before tossing it in. This puts a barrier between your garment and other things in the wash, as well as limit the amount of movement the piece has to rub against itself.

A third option to reduce pilling is to work with synthetic fibers that is labeled anti-pilling. These yarns tend to yield projects that are much longer lived, especially when properly cared for.

The moral of the story? You're going to have pilling, it's just one of those things that happens in the life of fibers but these are some ways you can remove them or reduce it.

I hope you found this article helpful , if so, please share it. I'd love to hear some of the ways you deal with pilling with your pieces.

Until next time,

Happy Making!