How Yarn is Made: Spun, Dyed, Packaged & Shipped

There is a bit of mystery among yarn lovers about how that beautiful yarn ends up on the shelf with ease, but in fact, what goes on behind the scenes is pretty miraculous. Having worked in both manufacturing and logistics, I'm fascinated by it.

It is extremely fast-paced, and I have videos to share with you that show exactly what happens behind the scenes at mainstream yarn manufacturers, including a former retailer, Joanne Fabrics and Crafts.

The world is involved in making yarn. As much as we would like to credit one country for it, it takes many to create, develop, and research technologies. In every way, the world needs each other.

Wool-based products rely on shearing the fiber when it is ready to be harvested from animals; the fiber needs time to grow and isn't inexhaustible, unlike polymer-based fibers.

You can learn more about wool here.

In some fiber-making companies, the wool is treated elsewhere before reaching the next process. It can usually come to the yarn companies already sorted, cleaned, dyed, and in roving format.

MYTH: Fibers are not always dyed or bleached white before the final dyeing process; the richness of the final color depends on the fiber's color before dyeing.

Rich colors sometimes originate from dark coloured raw fiber. Caron Tea Cakes are dyed using dark fiber with the color applied.

Sometimes you will see bleed-through of colors and be surprised to see it; there, chances are it's the original color of the fiber. Heathered-like yarn is usually an original fiber color with the color applied.

Polymer-Based Fibers and Preparation

Polymers used to make plastic-based fibers that resemble wool are produced in controlled laboratory environments. It's a chemical reaction between chemicals that form themselves.

This process doesn't rely on a season; it is based on oil extraction, which runs 24/7. The process of creating fiber is extremely fast and can be done at any time.

DuPont in the 1900s revolutionized the manufacturing process, making products cheaper. Below is a video showing you the chemical process for my polymer-based fibers. This is true for anything textile-based.

Like any polymer-based product, there is an environmental impact from microplastics seeping into water and other sources, which is probably not great for humans.

Odor Retention

One downside of polymer products is that they tend to retain oils and odors. This includes body oils that can be retained on finished items. They are extremely hard to remove from the products. For those who smoke around yarn, the oils and residue from the smoke embed into the yarn and are nearly impossible to remove. The only way to get rid of it completely is to burn off the oils, but that would mean the yarn would need to be burned, and therefore ruined. Depending on how long the yarn has been around, the presence of smoke or odor will determine whether the yarn is salvageable. As a non-smoker, I don't want smoked yarn in my stash so it doesn't carry over to other yarns in my collection.

After it is made and prepared, it can be dyed to color. Raw fibers can be dyed before they become yarn strands, or afterward.

Dyeing the Yarn - 4 Major Options

The yarn can be dyed before it's spun into strands, which is more common than dyeing after it's already spun into a color. All of the processes show you how the dye is applied afterward. The yarn is already a yarn strand, but the exception is cotton, which is not prepared for the final Dyeing

Dyeing processes that create fancy dye effects are applied to the yarn after it is spun and before the yarn is puffed up with steam.

#1 Soaking the Yarn / Raw Fiber

After the yarn is already made, the dyeing process is extensive. We think yarn is dyed in small batches, but the batches can be massive.

You will see the industrial cones are stacked and lowered into the dye baths. Some colors require a great deal of time; the dye also soaks into the polymer-based dye chemicals, allowing it to adhere to the fiber.

Watch how fascinating this is. After soaking, it has to go through a drying process so the yarn holds color. The water will turn clear eventually as the dye adheres to the fibers.

#2 Variegated Wash Dye

Below is cotton dyed in a variegated format. If the yarn is all one color, it will be soaked as in the video above. The cotton, in this, is hanging, and where the dyed water hits the yarn, it takes on the color of the spray.

It continues to spray until the water turns clear as the dye soaks into the cotton yarn. To get the yarn to adhere, the main ingredient, a natural-based base, is salt. It's why cotton can be used as a fabric on sensitive skin. It's truly a natural product.

The hanks need to undergo a slow drying process before being made into yarn balls.

#3 Roller Printing Machine

Roller printing is used for short or long sequences of colors. Caked yarn has very short color sequences. You cannot use the processes above to create fancy dye effects.

Each roller is like a felted pad, and color is pressed into the yarn strand as it passes. The sequence of colors doesn't need to be equally spaced, continuous, or the same sequence. The pressing of colors into the yarn can be strategic.

This process has been perfected over the last couple of decades. When you see a slight change in color between colors. The rollers have slightly overlapped so that there is no gap in the fiber's color.

It's not an overly fast process and adds to the cost of manufacturing. Once the fiber passes by all of the rollers, it passes through a high-temperature dryer and into a large hank format. It's prepared further by steaming and balled into a yarn ball.

This process is completely automated by computer to control coloring. Watch how amazing this is. It will put the cost of the yarn, and how it is made, into perspective, so you have a better understanding.

How Fiber is Made Into Yarn Strands

Some yarn companies don't produce the raw fibers but have them brought in. The raw fibers are usually predyed and just need to go through the process.

Step 1 - Preparing Bales of Fiber To Clean

For some companies, the fiber is already dyed and just needs to go through the final stages at the yarn company. Below, in pink, they are making Bernat Super Value with 100% acrylic yarn.

The second part of the video shows white fibers, and some balls are acrylic, while the others are 100% wool. The machine is mixing the fibers together, for example, 80% acrylic / 20% wool.

The machine is called a gilling. It pulls fibers from bales and/or bins and runs them through brushes to remove imperfections and straighten them for spinning.

This process happens twice. The first time does a great job, but the second time gets the fibers perfectly aligned and ready. You will see how fluffy the white yarn in the bin looks when it's done, and that's the 2nd time it went through the machine.

Watch the process. The finished product is placed in a bin and then moved to the rub roving process.

Step 2 - Rub Roving Cone Creation

The bins have been processed twice and are ready to go through the Rub Roving Cone Machine. The process is to combine two bins into one cone by applying a slight twist and stretching the roving yarn feeding into the machine.

The roving on the cones has very little strength and will break really easily, which is necessary for the spinning machine in the next process.

The machine resembles bowling pins automatically resetting. The cones roll to the back of the machine and are placed in a movable cart to get ready for spinning in the next process. Watch how this is done below.

Step 3 - How Yarn is Spun

The finished rubbed roving cones are placed over the spinners and fed down into the machine. The goal is for the machine to spin the fiber and stretch it further to make 1 ply of yarn.

Fun Fact: The slower the rotation on the top of the spinners, the thinner the yarn ply. One roving cone can take hours to spin and produce miles of yarn.

The operators set the machine and go to the next aisle. Any strands that break are simply retied and continue along. In a yarn company, there are so many aisles of these machines running at the same time, with just a handful of staff to reset cones that run out or when the yarn breaks.

Fun Fact: If the yarn strand breaks at this moment, you will most likely not see it in your yarn ball. You only truly see a knot in the ball when all the plies are tied together.

Watch how the yarn is spun. They are making Bernat Super Value in white in this video.

Step 4 - Doubler Machine to Combine Plies Together

Each spinner produced one industrial-length tube cone. This is the part where the plies are put together. If you want 4-ply, four cones are being pulled into the machine, and a new industrial cone is being created.

This machine doesn't twist the yarns together; it prepares them for the next machine in the twisting process.

This process is extremely quick, and you can barely see the thin fiber flying off these cones. Watch how this is done.

PS. If you look closely at the finished industrial cone, you can see that the fibers are not twisted together, but only grouped.

Step 5 - Twisting the Plies Together

The twisting process is a researched task. Too much twist, and the yarn turns into a curling phone cord. Not enough twist, the yarn will separate and potentially break apart. There is a lot of science applied to how much twist is added.

The doubler cones above feed into a machine, where the twist is applied on the way down, and the material is fed to a new cone for the next process. There are aisles and aisles of this at the yarn company. Notice you don't see employees, as this is automated.

If the strand breaks, the operator will come by after the cycle, retie the yarn, and continue building out he industrial cone. As a consumer, you will see the knot that is created here in your ball of yarn.

Watch how fast this is. Just one of those industrial cones is so many future yarn balls; it's not even funny.

Off-Dyed Yarn

If the yarn dye is off and doesn't match the brand within a tolerance, the yarn is still spun up and goes through the process, but the balls are not ball banded but simply put into a bag, and the yarn is sold off by the pound with no label of what the yarn actually was supposed to be. It saves them from throwing out perfectly good fiber.

Dye Lots on Ball Bands - HUGE TIP

As the raw fiber and cones moved throughout the factory, they retained their labels from the original batch. When the yarn is made, the same batches are produced simultaneously. On the ball band, shown above, the yarn indicates the final date that it was produced at the yarn ball step. If there is a quality control issue, they will know how many balls were produced from the same dye lot and/or during the same shift.

With the yarns changing on the shelf, it's possible that different dye lots are present. While the yarn is dyed within a tolerance, there can be a visual difference between one ball and another of the same color. The best thing to do is check the dye lot number; if it matches, it was made at the same time, and you won't notice any color difference within the same dye lot.

How 100% Cotton Yarn Goes to A Ball to Buy

Natural or bleached cotton, with no dye effects, still needs to be washed and dried before it goes into a yarn ball. Dyed yarn that has already been dyed and dried is ready to go to the ball.

Unlike acrylic and other yarns, this yarn doesn't need to be steamed to fluff it up into a yarn ball. 100% Cotton doesn't stretch or expand once it is spun. It's ready to go directly to either a cone or yarn ball with a label.

You can watch both of the processes in the video below.

Once the yarn is made, it is stored at the yarn company, awaiting the next process.

How The Yarn Gets to the Stores

The process from the yarn company to the retailer's distribution center is almost fully automated once the retailer decides to carry the yarn.

Dedicated space is allotted at the retailer distribution center(s) closest to the stores assigned to carry the yarn.

The main computer controls the inventory from the moment it is ordered and scheduled to arrive to each store's inventory levels. As you shop, the removal of the ball is detected, and once a yarn is depleted enough, a new order for the same yarn is triggered to restock the store.

What throws a computer out of sync is items that don't get scanned properly, damage, products in the wrong spaces, and shoplifting. Each shelf in a store is assigned a stock quantity, but if stock is stolen, the computer won't know it is missing and won't replenish it.

Shoplifting is a major issue in inventory management. It is estimated that about $112 billion USD goes missing; in Canada, it is $6.8 billion. These losses are unaccounted for by retailers across the country each year.

Percentage-wise, given our population differences, the same percentage of people are prone to shoplifting in both countries: 11 out of 100 are proned to shoplift. It truly costs everyone more when this occurs, but in my opinion, shoplifting is most likely to happen when people are at their limit and struggling to get through, and using it to make money or struggling to survive.

How Latch Hook Kits Are Made

Latch hook kits are also made with the same starting process of dyeing and yarn making. However, they have to go through a completely different process to measure out the yarn so the kit matches the assigned picture.

The yarn is grouped into what are referred to as yarn sausages. The operator has to carefully count how many strands a sausage needs to be. This is the most important element of the entire kit itself.

The yarns, grouped together, will feed through a compressor, be wrapped in plastic, then cut to the right length. Each bundle has the same yarn strand counts. That's why, when you get a bundle, the colors aren't grouped together. It's more efficient and cheaper to make when it's grouped all together.

Watch how meticulous the process is. It's pretty fascinating.