Effect of blending fine and medium coarse wools on blanket quality

An attempt was made to use medium coarse wool separately as well as in blends with fine wool for the preparation of blankets with an objective to give value addition to medium coarse wool by way of blending. One fine wool sheep-Bharat Merino (BM) and two medium coarse wool sheep-Chokla (CH) and Avikalin (AV) were selected for the study. Three types of yarns were prepared from Bharat Merino, Chokla and Avikalin after scouring and carding of raw wool. Yarn count was kept at 4.0 Nm for all the yarns. Six types of blankets were prepared from three types of yarn with ends/inch of 22 and picks per inch of 19 with 525 gsm. In the tensile characteristics, maximum breaking load of 318 N was observed for CH blanket followed by BM/CH blanket (292 N). Thermal insulation value of blankets ranged from 2.68 to 3.88 Tog. In smoothness ranking of blankets, the ranks in the decreasing order of smoothness were: BM, BM+CH, CH, BM+AV, AV+CH and AV. From the point of view of smoothness and tensile characteristics it can be concluded that one can blend 50% BM with 50% CH for optimum blanket quality.