Fleece Washing Adventures
This is my method for washing locks - which is my favourite way to process fleece. Spinning fine locks from the fold is just so satisfying, so this method gets things perfectly ready for that.
To start, I need to credit Stephanie Pearl-McPhee for writing this blog post that I read when it was written way back in 2007, before I had even started spinning. I’ve slightly adjusted the method (because I’m bad at following directions), but this is where I learned it. A lot of people refer to it as “the sausage method” and there are other tutorials and opinions on it if you look around a bit.
First things first, gather your supplies
1 - the fleece. You want something with a defined lock structure. If you’ve never pulled locks, you basically just grab the tip end and hold the rest down while you pull it away.
2 - some cloth. I use tulle, the blog post above uses a pillowcase. You just want something that water and fine dirt can go through but will keep the fiber in place. In theory cheesecloth will also work, but I’ve never tried it.
3 - soap. Pictured here is unicorn power scour and dish soap. Best practice says don’t use dish soap (the enzymes in it can be bad for protein fibers), but it does work. I did my first fleece with it. Rinse it well and it’s unlikely anything awful will happen. Shampoo also works in theory - I’d recommend one designed for oily hair, as you need to break down the oils in the fleece
4 - a pan. This is a 2$ cake pan from a thrift shop. It’s only for fiber stuff. In a pinch, you can just put boiled water right in the sink and do it there. Fleece is dirty, I don’t trust my sanitation skills enough to use a pan for fleece and then cook with it.
(in a pinch, a sink, a sock, boiled water and some shampoo does work - I know this because I may have gotten a bit over excited about fleece while away at a fiber arts retreat)
Step 1 - lay out the locks
The bit of tulle I use is cut to be 2x the width of the pan and just a bit less than the length. I lay my locks tips facing each other because I’m fussy like that. You don’t want them too thick as these two rows will be stacked. Keep an inch or so at each end.
Then fold the sides of the tulle to cover the locks
And then fold it all in half. This is your sausage. You can see below how tidy this fits in the pan.
Yes, it’s a very small bit of locks. This is a small batch method. I like it that way.
Do up your second sausage and then get the pan ready. A bit of soap and then fill it with water to about an inch from the top. You want the locks to be able to float and the dirt sink to the bottom.
Set it on the stove and put the locks in. I tend to push them down into the water (to get the air out and help them get fully soaked) but this makes some people nervous as agitation/pressure can cause felting.
Turn the stove on to a low simmer. DO NOT BOIL THE LOCKS. A bit above body temperature is probably fine, a low simmer at most. If you’re using a sink, putting boiling water into the sink is fine as it will just cool from there. The bubbles rising up from a boil can felt your fleece.
Then you just wait. Pics of the next step to come when my fleece is ready.
As a side note - when you pick locks, there will likely be some bits of fleece that don’t have that nice distinct lock structure and look more like this
You can see some bits of locks, but it’s hard to find the tips and most of it is floofed. That’s not waste! It can still be washed, it just doesn’t need the precise treatment the locks are getting.
