How is a recycled wool fabric made?

Before the circular economy of wool garments starts, a fundamental phase takes place in order to determine wether they are no longer usable or they can continue their life and be sold as vintage or second-hand clothing. We are talking about the so-called “Sbambolatura”, which – simply put – is an overall quality check on garments. All of this is done through a particular tool called “bambola” – ‘doll’ in English – which is a backlit and V-shaped dummy that reveals all the defects on garments.

❌ If the checked garment has defects, it is passed to the sorting phase, where it will be put with garments of similar color and composition, then recycled and used for producing recycled wool materials.

✔️ If the checked garment does not have defects, it will be put again into the market as second-hand or vintage clothing, thus living a longer life!

Recycled wool fabrics start from pre- and post-consumer wool garments and production scraps, which – before starting their journey to become ‘new’ fibers – must undergo the sorting process. In this phase, garments are masterfully divided by color and composition. This phase is done by the cenciaiolis, high-skilled artisans who are able to recognize fabrics (and their composition) just by touching them. Once old garments are sorted, they are sent to the next phase.

In this phase, the garments are manually cleaned from non-recyclable elements and parts that could contaminate the ‘new’ recycled fibers. Let’s see them here below:

1. All the parts containing elastane are cut off the garment
2. Brand labels and care labels are removed, as they are usually made of polyester and can subsequently hinder the recycling process and contaminate the composition of the ‘new’ fiber.
3. Zippers – and the part of fabric/knit they are stitched to – are cut
4. Buttons are manually pulled off the garment
5. Linings are taken out of the garment
6. Liners are cut off the garment, together with the part of fabric/knit they are bonded or stitched to
7. Embroideries are cut off the garment
8. And last but not the least, stitching made of a different material than the garments are cut off, together with part of the fabric/knit they stitched

In this phase, the garments and scraps , which were carefully cleaned and divided by color and composition, are processed with a mechanical shredding machine. Old garments are carried on a conveyor belt, first through a series of blades, or guillotines, then through two cylinders—one grabs, another one pulls—to chop the fabrics even finer, all of this without using chemicals, but just with a little water. The result is a ‘new’ recycled wool fiber.

This phase, called blending, gives life to the recycled wool fabric’s final color. When it comes to creating colors in wool recycling, no additional dye is needed, since the ‘new’ fibers obtained through the shredding process come from garments and scraps that were dyed in their former life. Imagine a painter with its color board, mixing different shades to create a specific color – it’s exactly the same with recycled wool colors. Raw material artisans, also called Feltrinisti, manage to devise new wool colors just by mixing different fibers and shades of colors, in specific percentages, developing actual ‘recipes’ that are archived and reproduced over time (see Recype). This color creation technique is circular, chemicals-free, dyes-free and gives life to unique colors, that cannot be obtained in other ways.

Once the right color recipe has been achieved and multiplied by the kgs of yarns to be produced, big bales of recycled wool fibers are sent to the spinning mill. Here, the raw material is processed in a big carding machine, which is composed of two large cylinders (drum and comb) equipped with metal teeth. This machine mechanically disentangles, cleans, intermixes and parallelizes fibres to produce a continuous and homogeneous web, which is then separated into long rovings and spinned. The yarn is formed by a number of intermittent actions, the rovings are drawn out by means of a moveable carriage, and then twisted to increase their strength. The resulting yarns are tested and – if they meet all quality standards – are sent to the weaving mill.

This is the crucial phase before creating the actual recycled wool fabric. A woven fabric is made of two main sets: warp and weft. Warp yarns run with along the length of fabric and weft yarns go across the width of the fabric. The warping phase is the preparation of yarns to weave fabric. It is the transfer of many yarns from the creel of single packages to a beam. The yarns will form a parallel sheet of yarn wound onto the beam. The basic objective of warping is to built a package where yarn ends remain in uniformly set parallel and continuous form, in order for it to be easily put on a loom and be woven.

The big beams of yarns obtained through the warping phase are sent to the weaving mill, the place where the actual recycled wool fabric comes to life. Weaving is the process through which a fabric is made by interlacing warp and weft threads thanks to a loom. The beam with warp yarns is set on the loom, the weft yarns passes across the loom in a shuttle, which carries the yarns on a pirn.

The result of the weaving phase is the greige fabric, which is tested and then sent to the finishing mill.

The finishing mill is the place that literally ennobles and enhances the look, performance and handfeel of greige fabrics, which usually are never readily usable. The newly born recycled wool fabric undergoes a series of wet, physical processes and treatments: such as fulling, tumbler washing, KD, raising, brushing, you name it, depending on the final look that is requested by brands or chosen by the textile mill.