Fiber Content Test

Inspired by We Wilsons, tonight, the younger two kids (the older ones didn't seem excited by a flame) and I burned our yarn and fabric in order to learn the fiber content. I specifically had yarn from my grandmother that I wanted to identify. You'll recognize several Lion Brand yarns -- I felt I wouldn't be at a loss if they burned. Finding Lion Brand yarns and their details are very easy. Without the yarn bands, I can look up their info online. Now the expensive yarns and the hard to find yarns from local stores, I'm saving those bands and those yarns -- no burning my precious fibers.

(Don't ask me why Blogspot turns every photo the wrong way. I guess it just expects portraits.)

Like the Wilsons, we read the procedure, but weren't sure what crushable or soft ashes looked like, or vigorous burning. The Wilsons had a 100% cotton control. We had our Lion controls.

We ended up burning a lot of different fabrics for the fun of it. Cheesecloth, flannel, stretch denim, if it was in the drawer in small quantity, then we burned it until our noses grew tired of bad acrylic smells. It just overpowered the good smells.

We learned that acrylic and polyester burn differently. Polyester quits burning upon removal from the flame. Acrylic continues to burn after removal from the flame. And they both smell really, really bad. I mean really bad. "G" thought that synthetics acted like plastic when you throw it in the campfire. I have to agree. And I have to bake in order to rid our house of the smell.

Wool and cotton remind us of campfire smells, and leave different ashes from each other. We liked how cleanly they burned. The synthetics burned, then left a plastic mass stuck to the bottom of our bowls. Ash is very nice in comparison.

Synthetic fabric can also look like wet boiling water while burning. "G" of GAIN has a scrap of polar fleece in this photo. Part of it fell from the main scrap and left a long stretchy, gooey string behind as it fell. It looked a lot like cheese on a pizza. But it smelled bad. And it was black.

Overall, this could be a good test for me. I buy remnants. They have wrappers for the workers to fill in about how much yardage the remnant contains, original price, sale price, etc. Frequently I find the space for fiber content empty.

And, the yarn from Grandma is cotton.