Development of wool-cotton blended blanket and assessment of its quality

Synthetic blankets are becoming popular due to their smooth feel and aesthetic look. Traditional blankets made out of wool tend to have rough feel and dull look. This study made an attempt to improve the feel and look of woollen blankets by blending with different proportions of cotton. Cotton was blended with wool (Bharat Merino and Chokla) and prepared seven types of blankets by varying blend levels with cotton proportion ranging from 5 to 30%. Yarn test results revealed that plain wool fibre yarn found to possess higher elongation by 5.6 to 6.9% than that of wool - cotton blended yarns. Thickness of woollen fabric was the highest and significantly different from other wool-cotton blended fabrics. Weft way bending length had less value ranging from 16 to 24% than warp way bending length. Plain wool fabrics had high extension with a difference of 4.5 mm and 5.4 mm in warp and weft way respectively, when compared to the wool-cotton blended fabrics. Thermal resistance of blended fabric dropped with the increase in cotton proportions in the blend. Increase in cotton resulted in more cool feeling to touch. Smoothness of blanket was improved with addition of cotton to the blend ratio. Maximum smoothness was observed for cotton: wool blend ratio of 30:70. The study demonstrated that up to 30% cotton can be blended with medium and fine wool in the preparation of blanket using woollen spinning system.