Spinning With Color – Fractal Spinning

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Have you ever wondered what fractal spinning is and why it is a great way to show off your fiber colors? Let’s take a look at what makes this technique so special!

One of the best things about spinning your own yarn is having control over every detail. From the fiber content, to the color, to the number of plies, and on and on. You could start with the same fiber and never run out of different yarns to make!

Lately, I’ve wanted to play around with color and different spinning techniques that can influence the final yarn. Fractal spinning was the perfect place to start.

I first heard about fractal spinning from the book Yarnitecture: A Knitter’s Guide to Spinning: Building Exactly the Yarn You Want by Jillian Moreno, which is an amazing resource for any spinner. After reading about it, I knew I wanted to give it at try!

What’s So Great About Fractal Spinning?

If you love to spin with multicolored roving, fractal spinning is the perfect technique for your spinning toolbox.

When I am looking for fiber to spin, I am always drawn in by the beautiful color combinations dyers can create. There are endless choices for what you can find! It’s not always a uniform color, it can be as many as the dyer wants.

But once I have that gorgeous, hand dyed fiber, in a complex colorway, I’m not always sure how to spin it to make sure all the colors shine in the final yarn. I have spun yarn that looked amazing as fiber, but got muddled and muddy by the time I spun it.

Sometimes, I have the opposite problem. I think I’m spinning a yarn that will have different colors on each strand, mixing and matching in beautiful ways along the length of the yarn, only to find all the colors lined up, and I have a self striping yarn instead.

Enter fractal spinning! This technique is an easy way to spin your yarn so all the colors can shine, and minimize striping, without having to a ton of fiber preparation, you should give fractal spinning a try!

What is Fractal Spinning?

Fractal spinning is a way to change the length of color repeats in your yarn singles, so when they are plied together, you get more variation between the two colors.

This works by breaking down your fiber into different vertical fractions before spinning (hence the name, fractal spinning). The bigger the fraction, the longer the color repeats. The smaller the fractions, the smaller the repeats.

How to Make Fractal Spun Yarn

First, you’ll want to determine the number of plies you want your final yarn to have. Most fractal spun yarns are 2-ply, but you can apply the same principals to 3 or even 4-ply yarn, as long as you have enough fiber.

For a 2-ply, fractal yarn, from one skein of fiber, start by dividing the yarn in half. Spin one half as is. With the other half, keep dividing it into smaller fractions.

Then, spin the other half of the yarn, end to end. The more you split your fiber, the shorter your color repeats will be.

The more you break down the second half, the more difference you will see between the strands. As long as you have enough fiber, you could have as big of a difference between the two fractions as you want.

Remember: don’t split your fiber too small to draft the yarn you want to make.

Let’s Get Spinning!

When I found this gorgeous Malabrigo fiber, I knew I wanted to fractal ply it, to show off all the beautiful colors and keep the yarn from being too stripey.

First, I split the roving down the middle, vertically.

Then, I took half of the fiber, and split it down the middle twice, into eighths.

For this project, I decided to spin my yarn on my Schacht Ladybug, with a short forward draw, to keep everything nice and neat.

I spun the 1/2 fraction of fiber onto one bobbin, then I spun all four 1/8 fractions onto a second bobbin, end to end.

Once the singles were spun, I plied them together to make my fractal spun yarn.

The Final Yarn

I love how this yarn turned out!

This is such an easy way to prep fiber, and the results are so worth it! I can’t wait to knit with this yarn, and I hope you give this a try!

If you want to learn more about spinning, click here.

What are your favorite ways to spin with color? Let me know in the comments below!