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Acrylic yarn often gets a bad rap in the knitting community. Many people love it, many people hate it (so much that they consider themselves yarn snobs that would never touch it), and many people fall in between – they know when it can actually be a great choice for a project and realize there are times you may not want to use it. We’ll explore knitting with acrylic yarn in this article – and everything you should know about it.
While acrylic yarn has some drawbacks, it does deserve a place in the knitting world – it’s an affordable choice and it can be a great, washable, easy-care yarn with many uses.
In this article we’ll look at some of the important things you need to know about knitting acrylic yarn:
How Acrylic Yarn is Made
Properties of Acrylic Yarn
Knitting with Acrylic Yarn
Choosing Knitting Patterns
Caring for Finished Projects
Buying Acrylic Yarn
More Questions about Knitting Acrylic Yarn
We’ll look at all of these topics in-depth so you’ll know when acrylic is the right choice for your next knitting project.
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How Acrylic Yarn is Made
Before we dive in to the advantages and disadvantages of knitting acrylic yarn, how to care for your projects, and all of that – let’s take a quick look at how acrylic yarn is actually made.
All fibers for yarn can be divided into four broad categories – animal fibers (like wool yarn, silk, and alpaca), plant fibers (like cotton yarn and linen), biosynthetic fibers (like rayon and bamboo), and synthetic fibers (like acrylic and nylon). Acrylic yarns fall within the synthetic fibers category because it is a petroleum-based product that is engineered and manufactured to be a soft, light, and durable yarn. It is not a natural fiber – it is a man-made fiber.
The process for making acrylic yarn begins by melting and mixing the ‘ingredients’ before extruding them through spinnerets to create filament threads that are bundled together. These threads are then stretched and cut to imitate the staple length of other fibers before being combed and spun into yarn. In the end, that mixture of petroleum-based man-made materials ends up looking and feeling like real, natural fibers.
If you’d like to see the manufacturing process in action, here’s a video about the process for Red Heart Yarns:
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