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Soft as a cloud, but very capricious

 

 

Before using natural wool as filling for my dolls, I started with polyester. It is not a bad material, by any means, but I always felt something was missing. As if choosing a real, natural, alive material to work with could bring life to my creations as well. Thus began the quest to find the best wool around.

 

And it was no easy feat. I had no idea of the difference between raw wool, pellets, carded wool and how many washing cycles it needs to undergo until it becomes clean. I also did not know that raw wool is full of lanolin, vegetal matter, and has a specific warm, farm-like smell (I find the smell quite nice, as it reminds me of my favorite dog, Rita, but I digress...).  

 

As you may know, dolls intended for play need to uphold certain safety standards. The fabrics, threads, yarn and stuffing need to have very strict chemical tests and certifications before you can put them in a toy. If you would like to know more on that, see my older posts - I wrote about safety testing previously. And of course, stuffing also has to fulfill certain requirements, among others - it needs to be clean and not flammable.

 

 

It seemed the quest was over after my first adventure ordering fluffy wool that arrived full of vegetal matter (that is, grass - because who knew, sheep live outside on the meadow, not inside watching Netflix...).

 

After watching endless YouTube tutorials and reading blog posts, I finally understood a bit more about wool processing. Natural wool that comes off of the sheep is usually very dirty and full of the so-called "vegetal matter". It needs to undergo numerous washing cycles, combing, and carding before it can be spun into yarn. And some farms break it down into wool pellets - that is, tiny balls of wool which are very good at holding their shape under pressure. Only for me, these are no good - their tiny round shapes show through the thin cotton fabric that makes the doll's skin. So unless I wanted uneven dolls, it seemed I had to find carded wool that would allow an even stuffing without showing through the fabric.

 

 

In the picture above, you have an example of what carded wool looks like. Carding wool is like combing it, using a wool carder (that is a machine full of spikes, that separates the wool fibers without breaking them, making the wool very fluffy). It also has the advantage that is separates the vegetal matter trapped in between the fibers and cleans the wool. But of course, such a process is tiresome and slow, making any such wool quite expensive. Let alone when you need kilograms of it! 

 

I found my saving in a small business from Eastern Europe, that sells carded wool for bedding and mattresses. After thoroughly questionning the owner about their processing (how is the wool washed? are the fibers fine enough to not pass through the cotton doll skin? will it irritate the skin on contact? does it smell? and on and on), I concluded it is exactly what I needed and placed an order. After it arrived, I was as happy as can be: I had finally found the perfect doll stuffing!

 

Soft, fluffy, nice and clean. And what other advantages does wool have over polyester? Well, for once it is not flammable. This is an important feature especially for the safety testing required in Europe. It is also breathable, and because of the lanolin it contains, it does not hold humidity and odours. As with any good thing in life, wool is also fragile - washing it in hot water, exposing it to heat or agitating it during washing can cause it to felt. Felted wool hardens and shrinks, so you can imagine how fast that can ruin a doll. But in the end, I decided to use wool simply for the joy of working with natural materials.

 

So, sheep wool: yay or nay? What do you think?