Why knitwear pills, and which fibres do it worst

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Researched. We have not used this one long enough to give you a verdict, and we would rather say so than invent one. What follows is how it works, who it suits, and what it will not do. When we have used it properly, this page carries the verdict and the date.

Philips Fabric Shaver GC026

A pill is a small ball of tangled fibre, held to the surface of a fabric by a few fibres that have not let go.

That description contains the whole problem, and it explains something that otherwise looks like luck: why one jumper covers itself in bobbles by November and another, apparently similar, does not.

The mechanism, which has three steps and not one

One. Friction pulls fibre ends out of the yarn. Wearing does this. So does washing.

Two. Those loose ends tangle into a ball. This happens to almost everything. It is not a defect and it is not avoidable.

Three. The ball either stays or it goes. It is anchored by a handful of fibres still rooted in the fabric. If those anchors are weak, they break, the pill drops off in the course of a day, and you never learn it existed. If they are strong, the pill stays put and collects more fibre.

Step three is the entire difference. Fabrics that "do not pill" are mostly fabrics that shed their pills before you notice them.

Which fibres do it worst

Acrylic, polyester and nylon. The reason is strength, which sounds like a compliment and here is not. These fibres are far stronger than the anchoring job requires, so the anchor never breaks. A pill on an acrylic jumper is there until something takes it off.

Cotton pills quite readily and then loses them, because cotton fibres are comparatively weak and snap under the weight of their own bobble.

Wool varies more than anything else here, and the variation is not about price. It is about staple length, which is the next section.

A blend of a weak fibre and a strong one is the worst case there is — a cotton-polyester sweatshirt, a wool with a lot of nylon in it. The weak fibre migrates out easily and the strong one holds the ball on. Both halves of the mechanism, in one garment. A small amount of nylon in a sock or a cuff is a sensible trade for abrasion resistance. A lot of it through the body of a jumper is a pilling machine.

Filament yarns barely pill at all. Silk, and the smooth filament polyester in a decent shirting. A filament runs the length of the yarn, so there are hardly any cut ends to migrate in the first place.

Two words worth learning: staple and twist

Staple length is how long the individual fibres are before they are spun together. Short fibres mean more ends per inch of yarn, and more ends mean more migration. This is why cashmere pills. The fibre is short and very fine, which is precisely what makes it feel the way it does in the shop. Cashmere pilling is not a failure of the garment. It is the bill for the handle.

Twist is how tightly the yarn is spun. Loose twist feels soft and lets fibres wander out. Tight twist feels crisper and holds them in. Nearly every jumper that feels wonderful under your hand on the shelf has traded pill resistance for that sensation, and the trade is never mentioned on the swing tag.

You can test both without knowing a single number. Rub the fabric firmly against itself before you buy — cuff against forearm, for as long as the shop will tolerate. If it fuzzes while you are standing there, it will do it faster on a body that moves all day.

Why it is always the same five places

Pilling is friction, so it appears wherever friction is. Underarms. The inside of the sleeve where it crosses the body. One shoulder and one side of the chest, if you carry a bag. The seat. Inner thighs.

A jumper pilling in a diagonal band across the front is not defective. It is telling you about a rucksack strap.

What to do about it

Buy a fabric shaver — a rotating blade under a guard, not a sweater stone, and not a disposable razor.

• Lay the garment flat on a hard surface. Do not hold it up and do not stretch it over your knee. A blade on taut fabric over a curve is how a hole gets made.
• Short, light passes. The guard sets the depth. Pressing adds nothing except risk.
• Wash inside out, cool, gentle cycle, and less often than you currently do. A washing machine is a friction machine with a drain.
• Do not tumble dry knitwear at all, for this reason and several others.

What it will not do

Shaving does not stop pilling. It takes away the evidence. On a synthetic knit you will be doing this for the life of the garment, on a schedule, indefinitely.

It will not bring back a surface you have already shaved thin. Every pass takes a little fabric with it, and there is a limit that you will find by crossing it.

And it will not tell you which of two situations you are in, which is the information actually worth having. Fuzz in the first month of a good natural-fibre knit is usually surplus short fibre shedding out, and it settles down. Pilling on a cheap synthetic blend does not settle down. That fabric is not breaking in. It is behaving exactly as it will behave for as long as you own it.

The one thing that decides whether this is a problem

The composition label, read before the card comes out. Everything above is damage control. The label is the decision.

The product

It is cheap, it has been sold largely unchanged for years, and it does the one thing a fabric shaver should do: a rotating blade under a guard. The expensive rechargeable models mostly differ in blade size and run time, which matters if you are doing a coat and does not if you are doing a cuff.

The one people are searching for is the Philips Fabric Shaver GC026.

Philips Fabric Shaver GC026

We do not print prices here, because a price we typed last month is a price that is wrong today.

Written by JamieG in Garner Town, Tennessee.