Smooth, firm yarn spun from long wool fibers that have been carded and combed, and the cloth woven from it.
Worsted names a route through the mill, not a fiber; the Museum at FIT applies the term to yarn made on the worsted spinning system, regardless of fiber content. On Woolmark’s account, worsted processing takes the longest fleece fibers, cards, gills and combs them, removing short fibers called noils and leaving a sliver called top for spinning. The yarn makes the flatter, lighter, smoother fabrics of traditional tailoring. The woolen route uses shorter, more variable fibers and no combing, for thick, heavyweight woven or knitted garments, often milled to a hairy surface.
Super numbers grade the fiber, not the yarn. Under the FTC’s Wool Products Labeling Rules, a wool product labeled “Super 100’s” or “100’s” is mislabeled “if the average diameter of wool fiber of such wool product does not average 18.75 microns or finer”; each step of ten lowers the limit by half a micron. In knitting, worsted also names a medium-weight yarn.
In job listings
Worsted is rarely named in listings, but its divide runs through spinning mills. One wool carding operator’s listing describes carded-spinning production, the woolen side, where the carded web goes to spinning without combing, and asks for knowledge of the carding settings for each article. See current wool roles.
