Our first Cambrian Wool woven fabric.
It all started after the initial project where we developed our hand knitting yarn, we knew instantly that we could develop a weaving yarn in the same beautiful fibre…
Here we have the finer details of the Design & Development of our limited run of 50 blankets and 75 scarves, woven in our beautiful Cambrian wool and to be sold exclusively via our online shop.
We have been looking to develop a suitable count of yarn in our Cambrian wool, for many years.
We will be launching our blankets at Crafts Festival Wales in Cardigan on the weekend of 6th to 8th of September 2024. Our Waiting list is now live for anyone who wants to register their interest and be the first to purchase.
The Birth of a Blanket
Creating the yarn
Let’s start with our original hand knitting yarn. The fibre is carded to ‘tops’ in order for it to be worsted spun (different for woollen spinning), it is spun to a singles yarn and then twisted into 2/6’s (2 strands twisted together) which makes our 4 ply, and then 3/6’s (3 strands twisted together) which makes our Double Knit hand knitting yarn.
We took the 1/6’s and asked our spinners if they could put more twist into the yarn to make it suitable for weaving. We then went to our good friends at Melin Tregwynt who put the dyed yarn onto a pattern that they had running on their looms to check the quality. We had the fabric finished in Yorkshire for a soft feel.
The resulting fabric is truly beautiful.
…and we are very pleased with the handle. We wanted something different to the handle of the traditional Welsh Blankets, which is generally quite heavy. This weave felt much lighter and so lends itself beautifully to soft furnishings, accessories, even fashion garments.
Cambrian Wool meets Burberry
In 2022 a huge opportunity came up to supply our wool to Burberry for a Welsh wool project they were looking to run. It took us down an R&D route that whilst a little challenging, allowed us to experiment with twisting the singles yarn to produce the most beautiful yarn and double cloth blankets.
Soft, quite heavy, but utterly beautiful.
When we had the 2/6’s weaving quality spun for Burberry, we ordered extra for our own product development. The wheels were in motion!
A note about provenance
Now, we are in a strange position here. Our dream would be to produce Welsh wool blankets that are also woven in Wales, but right at this point in time, that is not possible. There are no mills commission weaving at this moment …a whole other story for another day!
But we can certainly be proud to say that our blankets are 100% Welsh (Cambrian) wool.
The only other blankets woven recently (within the last 50-60 years) as far as we know are at Melin Tregwynt, who have used our Cambrian Wool to produce limited edition blankets called Bryngaer. Again, superb quality, handle and wonderful design.
There are Welsh wool ‘designed and woven’ blankets out there but the wool used in larger commercial batches is British wool (which of course is fabulous) but 100% Welsh wool is not used because it is not available on a commercial scale…
…enter Cambrian Wool.
The future
We have a long way to go at Cambrian Wool, because of long lead times, supply chain challenges and the financial investment needed to develop products is scarce, but we are slowly getting to where we would like to be, which is:
Offering yarn and other products using 100% Welsh wool, where fibres are spun and woven* in Wales.
*At the moment there is no-one commission weaving in Wales so this run of blankets has been woven in Scotland. We are hopeful that by the time we come to order our second run of blankets that we will be able to weave them in Wales.
