Pilling 101

Why your handknit sweaters pill & how to keep them looking fresh

This is my Targhee Worsted yarn. Notice the firm twist. I love this yarn for sweaters and especially sweaters with a texture pattern.

I’ve been knitting every day for just over 15 years.

(I learned to knit way longer ago, but I became a Knitter with a capital K around 2008, when my kid was a toddler and my first knitted items were tiny strawberries for his play kitchen!)

For most of my knitting years and despite how much I still love making tiny things, I’ve focused on making sweaters. I would guess I’ve made around 75 sweaters. Fewer than some people have made but also more than many others. I only have 20 or 25 of these finished sweaters in my current wardrobe.

What happened to the other 50?

Some didn’t fit the way I’d hoped, some don’t fit my current body, and some I fell out of love with or my style changed. But some of them pilled like crazy and looked old and worn after just a few wears, and they made me feel ick when I wore them.

I’m still learning about my fit preferences and learning how to choose patterns that will result in sweaters I love. But the thing I’ve learned the most about, and what I want to share, is what I’ve learned about pilling and yarn choices and how to make sweaters that still look couture-level handmade, even after lots of wears.

I learned two things: how to choose a better sweater yarn and how to get rid of pills.

How to choose a better sweater yarn

Uncomfortable truth: Not every yarn is going to make a great sweater—not even if you use the yarn recommended in the pattern. There are many reasons why a designer chooses to work with a particular yarn, and how long-lasting the fabric will be isn’t always the top motivation. (No shade intended to designers. There can be so many reasons to design with a particular yarn. But if you, like me, want a sweater that looks fresh after many wearings, then you can get comfortable choosing the best possible sweater yarn for you, no matter what the designer has used.)

Here’s what to know: Pills happen because tiny bits of the actual wool fiber pop out of the twisted yarn strand. They rub together and create a little ball of wool—a pill. Pills can be small (like a tiny blob you can pick off) or they can be so numerous your sweater looks like it’s a million years old.

There are four things that will influence how many pills are going to happen with any particular yarn:

• Fiber staple length. This is a fancy way of saying this is how long the actual wool strands are that make up the yarn. The longer the strand, the more likely it to stay tucked into the twisted yarn and not make a pill.
  
  Here’s a short list of breed-specific wools I’ve encountered in yarn stores, listed from longest to shortest fiber length. The closer your yarn is to the bottom of this list, the more likely it is to pill.

  
  Wool breed (longer to shorter staple length)
  Icelandic Lopi
  Shetland
  Blue-faced Leicester (BFL)
  Targhee
  Kid Mohair
  Merino
  Rambouillet
  Cashmere
  Yak

• Twist. Tighter twists help keep those fibers tucked in. More loosely twisted yarn is going to mean more pilling.

• Friction. Places on your body where the sweater rubs against other places on your body (or against an item you might carry, like a bag) are going to pill. That’s why pills happen first on high-rub areas like under your arms.

• Gauge. The looser the pattern gauge relative to the yarn weight, the more likely your sweater is to pill. A fingering weight sweater knit at 24 sts to 4 inches (10 cm) is going to pill a whole lot more than a sock that’s knit at 32 sts to 4 inches (10 cm). Why? There’s more room for each strand of yarn to rub against one another.

• Stitch pattern. Stockinette will pill more than textured stitches that combine knits and purls. That’s because knits and purls tend to fit together and make a denser fabric — again, there’s less room for the strands of yarn to rub against one another.

I have learned to take all of this into account when I choose a yarn for a sweater. If I have a really soft, short staple-length fiber that I want to use (like a merino-rambouillet blend), I’ll give it the best chance of wearing well by choosing a specific yarn with a high twist. I’ll probably also choose a pattern that’s not all stockinette stitch but that is textured, instead.

When choosing which patterns to knit, I will frequently adjust pattern gauge as well. I’ve found that it’s pretty common for designers to write patterns in gauges that I find to be, well, unhelpful for my long-term goal of making sweaters I will feel great in for a good, long time.

Gauge changes are the most frequent modification I make. My body is in the mid-size of most pattern ranges, so I can often knit a larger size sweater in a denser-than-recommended gauge and get a sweater that fits well. (I’ve shared on Instagram how I math this out.) If you’re already in the largest one to two sizes of a pattern’s range, though, this isn’t going to work. (Aside: I wish more designers talked about gauge and designed with long-term sweater wear in mind.)

Pills are inevitable in any woolen garment, but they don’t have to be so numerous and so frequent that your sweater looks old and worn when it’s not.

My most important strategy is to choose a yarn that will give me the best chance of pills developing as infrequently as possible. But what about the pills that will inevitably happen, you may be thinking? Welp, I remove them.

How to get rid of pills

Once your sweater has pilled, there’s no way to tuck those little balls (aka pills) back into the yarn; they’ve already popped out and have already compromised the structural integrity of the fabric. So, I remove them.

You might find it interesting that many of the things that make handknit sweaters pill also hold true for commercial, machine-knit sweaters. Designs that require less skill and time to construct, fabric that is less plush, yarn that is soft to touch but will wear poorly in thinner fabrics — all these things can make a sweater cheaper to manufacture and tempt us to buy it. And that sweater will quickly look pilled and worn.

For a deeper dive into why commercially-made clothes have gotten so much worse than they used to be, listen to the following episode of the new Culture Study podcast. (Note: You can listen to the whole podcast without becoming a subscriber, paid or free, even though the page looks like it’s just a preview.)

Why Do Clothes Suck Now?

If pills are inevitable, how do you get rid of them?

Many knitters love the Gleener tool, but it’s actually not my favorite.

(The Gleener is an easy-to-hold tool that has a rough “bar” that’s like a pumice stone. You apply a bit of downward pressure and swipe the tool down the sweater front, and it both brushes the loose fibers in the same direction and gently pulls off pills and extra fuzz.)

I find that the brushing action doesn’t give me a long-enough lasting result. I’ve “gleened” many a sweater, only to see myself in the mirror a few hours later with plenty of pills having reappeared. I’ve often wondered if the brushing action makes a soft halo which then makes pills likely to (re)form? I don’t know, but I do know that when I want to care for a sweater, I get longer lasting results with a sweater shaver.

Yes, I shave my sweaters, just not with a razor. I use this. (Aside: I’ve linked to Amazon because it’s one of the only places to find some things online nowadays. It’s not an affiliate link. I believe we need stronger anti-trust laws and elected officials who will limit the market power of any one entity. LMK in the comments if you’ve found a better everyday solution because driving more traffic to a giant company harming our planet doesn’t feel good!)

(Back to pilling:) I have found that smoothly cutting away the pills helps me strike that balance between looking fresh and giving my woolen fabric the longest-possible life. I’d rather use my sweater shaver once a month than use a gleener every time I wear that sweater.

As you might guess, as a yarn dyer, I’m really invested in finding yarns that meet my standards of wear. I put all of this into the yarn bases I choose to dye and the patterns I choose to recommend.

If it’s a super-soft yarn with a short staple length — like my Harvest Sport, which is made of merino-rambouillet yarn — it needs to have a tight twist (mine does). I’ve learned, through trial and error knitting lots of sweaters that pilled more than I’d like, that Harvest Sport really needs a gauge of 23 or 24 stitches to 4 inches for me to be happy with the fabric.

New in the shop today

I keep trying to find a clever organizing principle for today’s shop update, but, it’s not coming to me. I have a some bits and bobs of things left over from my last few dye projects, and they are really just perfect if you want to work with some of my yarn:

These are just some of the Targhee Sock yarn skeins I've just popped into the shop!

Coming soon: 🫧Lather🫧

Most of my creative energy this week has gone into an upcoming collaboration with the ever-brilliant Hunter Hammersen.

It’s for the most perfect gift knitting project, especially and importantly, if you want to “gift” something very nice and luxurious to your very own self.

It’ll be out on February 20, and so next week’s newsletter will be on February 20 (a Tuesday) rather than Sunday. (I’ll be sharing a super-special pre-release extra just for you, my wonderful newsletter subscribers, so be sure your settings are toggled for “Shop Updates.”) Go here to check.

So many of you shared your grief stories with me over the past several weeks, and y’all are so tender and wonderful. In the words of poet Nikita Gill:

Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.

—Nikita Gill