We’re kicking off a weekly series this week called Wool Literacy that we hope will get readers a little more “literate” with wool. Our teacher is none other than Peggy Hart, Founder of Bedfellows Blankets. Peggy is also a textile designer, production weaver, and teacher with experience in designing, producing, and marketing hundreds of blankets annually including custom blankets for sheep and alpaca farmers using their own yarn. We wrote all about her here.

Wool: The covering coat of the domesticated sheep.

The term is also used for fibers obtained from other animals; in this case, the name of the animal must be specified.
Dorothy Burnham, A Textile Terminology: Warp and Weft, 1980

From the Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939:
Fiber from the fleece of the sheep or lamb, and hair of the Angora goat (may include the specialty animal fibers from the hair of the camel, alpaca, llama, and vicuna)

It is the original miracle fiber: warm, durable, elastic, non flammable, takes color well, and is of course a renewable resource. Different sheep breeds produce fiber ranging from very fine to very coarse, and of lengths of 1” to 15” a year.

About our Wool Literacy teacher:
Peggy Hart is a production weaver and teacher who designs, produces, and markets hundreds of blankets each year including custom blankets for sheep and alpaca farmers using their own yarn. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, worked as a weaver in one of the last mills in Rhode Island, and has woven for the last thirty years on Crompton and Knowles W-3 looms. She has a special affinity for wool, and her book Wool: Unraveling an American Story of Artists and Innovation was published in December of 2017.
Read more about her here.