The Difference Between Roving, Top, Batts, Etc.

When you first become interested in the fiber arts, especially in spinning, you can quickly become overwhelmed by all the terms people throw around. While this post won’t attempt to completely cover all the terminology involved, I’ll take a stab here at something a lot of beginning spinners ask – what’s the difference between various fiber preparations – roving, top, etc.?

But first, I’ll mention two broad categories of prepared fiber – carded fiber vs. combed fiber.

The combing process aligns fiber in a parallel fashion and removes the shorter bits. You should use combed fiber when you want to make a true worsted yarn. In contrast, the carding process retains both the longer and shorter fibers together, and aligns the fibers somewhat, but in a less parallel, more jumbled fashion than you’ll find in a combed preparation. Carded fiber is used to make a woolen yarn, and is also often used for needle felting or wet felting. Woolen yarn is fluffier and has trapped air in it, which will result in a warmer finished garment. Worsted yarn is smoother, more dense, and more lustrous.

A batt is a carded fiber preparation made with a drum carder. It is basically a sheet or rectangular mass of carded fiber.

A roving is a batt that has been sectioned or drawn out into a long strand of overlapping fibers, and has had a little bit of twist added to it.

Pencil roving is like regular roving, but is thinner.

A sliver (pronounced with a long “EYE” sound, not like something you might get in your finger), is similar to a roving, but doesn’t have any added twist.

Pin-drafted roving is a roving on which a pin-drafting machine has been used to further align the fiber and make the preparation more even, but not as even or parallel as you’d get in a combed preparation.

A rolag is a hand-carded fiber preparation. Once the fiber is carded on the hand cards, it is taken off and rolled up kind of link a fruit rollup.

Top is fiber that has been combed and pulled out into a long strands.

And finally, a quick word of advice. Although the technically correct term for a long strand of combed fiber is a “top” and the correct term for a long strand of carded fiber is a “roving”, many people – even people who are selling you the fiber – often use the terms interchangeably. So, if you are set on making either a true worsted or true woolen yarn, make sure you double-check to find out if the fiber has been combed or carded before purchasing!