MATERIAL RESEARCH · RESEARCH-CREATION · 2025–2026
UNTAPPED POTENTIAL
Exploring the Role of Ontario-Produced Wool in Sustainable Textile Practices
Ontario wool is being underused/discarded, and I wanted to understand why. Research combined stakeholder perspectives (survey) with hands-on material study; work resulted in material experiments, Breed Study Book and Sheep Portrait.
- 15 fleeces studied
- 51 survey participants
- Multiple textile techniques
Why Is Ontario Wool Being Discarded?
This project started with something I couldn’t quite understand.
I kept hearing stories about Ontario sheep farmers throwing away, composting, or even burning their wool because it wasn’t worth selling. As a spinner and textile maker, that was difficult for me to make sense of. I knew wool as a useful and incredibly versatile material, and at the same time, there was no shortage of people buying wool, yarn, and wool products.
So why was wool being discarded here?
At first, I thought the answer might be fairly simple. Maybe certain Ontario fleeces weren’t suitable for textile use, or maybe there simply wasn’t enough demand for them.
The more I investigated, the more complicated the problem became.
Through conversations and survey responses from farmers, processors, and people working with wool, I began to see a much larger system behind the material. Limited local processing, long mill wait times, processing costs, small production volumes, gaps between different parts of the supply chain, and difficulty finding markets all influence whether a fleece is worth keeping.
The question gradually changed from “Is this wool useful?” to “What prevents this wool from being used?”
How I Investigated It
Looking at wool from more than one direction
I surveyed farmers, processors, and wool professionals to understand what happens to Ontario wool before it ever reaches a maker.
I collected and studied 15 raw fleeces sourced from Ontario farms.
I sorted, washed, prepared, spun, knitted, crocheted, tufted, and wove the fibre, observing how different fleeces responded along the way. What I learned through research and making eventually became two connected works: the Breed Study Book and Sheep Portrait.
What I Heard From the Wool Community
The problem wasn’t simply the wool.
To understand why Ontario wool is often undervalued or discarded, I surveyed people who experience different parts of the wool system firsthand.
The survey received 52 responses, with 51 eligible participants: 25 sheep farmers, 2 wool processors, 2 farmer-processors, and 22 industry professionals and specialists.
I originally expected material quality to be a major reason why wool wasn’t being used. Instead, the responses pointed toward a much more complicated system.
Across the survey, several challenges appeared repeatedly:
Ontario has limited options for wool processing. Farmers described difficulty finding mills that could take their fleece, particularly when working with smaller quantities or looking for particular types of processing.
Even when processing was available, distance, transportation, and long mill wait times could make turning raw fleece into a usable product difficult. Some wool had to travel outside the province for processing.
Shearing, transportation, washing, processing, and other labour can cost more than the value farmers are able to recover from the finished wool. For some farms, keeping and processing the fleece becomes difficult to justify economically.
The survey also revealed gaps between farmers, processors, makers, and consumers. Wool may exist in one place and interest in local fibre in another, but the people, knowledge, processing capacity, and markets needed to connect them don’t always meet.
Participants repeatedly pointed toward education, advocacy, stronger coordination, and clearer information about local wool as possible ways forward. Their responses suggested that increasing the value of Ontario wool isn’t only about producing more wool, it is also about helping people understand what different fleeces can do and creating better connections around them.
A shift in the question
Why isn’t Ontario wool good enough to be used?
⬇
What happens when a diverse material enters a system that has limited capacity to process, understand, connect, and find appropriate uses for it?
The responses suggested that wool’s low value cannot be explained by the fibre alone. Infrastructure, economics, processing, knowledge, and coordination all shape what eventually happens to a fleece.
That made me want to return to the material itself.
If Ontario wool was often described as difficult, coarse, low-value, or unsuitable, what would I find if I actually worked with the fleeces myself?
Meet the Fleeces
There wasn’t one “Ontario wool.”
The more fleeces I worked with, the harder it became to talk about Ontario wool as though it were one material.
Some fleeces were immediately familiar to work with. Others behaved in ways I hadn’t expected. The differences made it increasingly difficult for me to think about wool simply as “good” or “bad.” Instead, I started asking what each fleece could do, and what kind of textile might make sense for it.
Learning Through the Material
I started with the fleece as it came from the sheep, noticing staple length, crimp, colour, lustre, softness, and variation across the fleece.
Sorting showed me that even a single fleece isn’t necessarily one consistent material.
Washing revealed characteristics that were difficult to see when the fibre was still greasy and unprocessed.
Carding, combing, and other preparation methods changed how the fibres aligned and how they behaved during spinning.
Different spinning methods brought out different qualities in the same fibre.
Knitting, weaving, crochet, and tufting allowed me to see what happened when yarn and fibre became textile.
Putting samples beside one another helped me understand how breed, preparation, spinning, and construction worked together.
Experiment – Breed Book
Asking the material questions
Does preparation change what I think a fleece is good for?
Question
How much does fibre preparation influence the final material?
What I tried
I prepared similar fibres in different ways like combing and carding before spinning and compared the resulting yarns and samples.
What I noticed
Preparation affected alignment, texture, loft, and the spinning experience itself. I began to see “fibre characteristics” as only one part of the story; the way we handle the material also shapes what it becomes
How much can spinning change the same fibre?
Question
What happens when the same fleece is spun in different ways?
What I tried
I compared long-draw and short-draw spinning using fibre from the same source.
What I noticed
Long draw created a loftier, airier yarn, while short draw produced a smoother and more controlled surface. The fleece hadn’t changed, but the qualities I could bring out of it had.
What happens when different fleeces meet the same technique?
Question
Will different fleeces behave similarly when made into the same textile structure?
What I tried
I used comparable making techniques across fleeces with different characteristics.
What I noticed
The same technique could highlight completely different qualities: softness in one sample, structure in another, and lustre or texture in another. Rather than asking which fleece performed “best,” I became more interested in which relationships between fibre and technique worked well.
What I Began to Understand
Working across different Ontario fleeces challenged the idea that wool can easily be divided into “good” and “bad.” A characteristic that might be undesirable for a soft garment could be useful somewhere else. Coarseness, strength, lustre, crimp, staple length, and softness become meaningful in relation to what we are trying to make.
Not every fleece needs to become a sweater. Different fibres may be better suited to different applications, from garments and blankets to rugs, felt, or other textile uses. Instead of expecting every fleece to meet the same standard, I became more interested in finding applications that make sense for the material.
The raw fleece is only the beginning. Sorting, washing, preparation, spinning, and textile construction can all change how its qualities appear in the finished material. Understanding a fleece therefore means understanding both the fibre itself and what happens to it through processing.
Measurements such as fibre diameter, staple length, and crimp can tell us important things about wool. But they don’t communicate the entire experience of working with it. Handling, spinning, and making revealed qualities that were difficult for me to understand through numbers or written descriptions alone.
The Communication Problem
But how do I communicate what a fleece feels like?
As I documented the fleeces, I ran into another problem.
I could write that a sample was soft, coarse, springy, smooth, or lustrous, but those words only go so far. What feels soft to me may not feel soft to someone else. A photograph can show colour and texture, but it can’t tell you how the fibre moves through your fingers or how a yarn bends, stretches, or springs back.
I realized that if I wanted to communicate what I was learning from the material, description alone wasn’t enough.
That question became the starting point for the Breed Study Book, where the research could be encountered not only by reading about the wool, but by physically touching and comparing it.
Reconnecting Material With Origin
What happens when the material is reconnected to the animal it came from?
Working with raw fleece also made me increasingly aware of how easily wool becomes anonymous.
Once fibre becomes roving, yarn, or fabric, it can be difficult to imagine the individual sheep, farm, and landscape behind it.
For many of the fleeces in this research, farmers shared photographs of the sheep they came from. I began using each sheep’s own fleece to recreate its image through knitting, weaving, crochet, and tufting.
That process became Sheep Portrait, a way of bringing the material and its origin back together and making the relationships between sheep, farmers, fibre, makers, and textile visible again.
What Changed in My Thinking
I stopped asking whether the wool was “good enough.”
At the beginning of this research, I was trying to understand why a useful material was being discarded. Part of me expected that I would eventually find a straightforward explanation.
Instead, the project changed how I understood both wool and value.
I began to see that the value of a fleece isn’t contained in the fibre alone. It is shaped by infrastructure, labour, processing, knowledge, market expectations, and what we believe wool should be used for. A fibre that seems unsuitable in one context may become meaningful in another.
The project also changed how I think about research itself. Making wasn’t simply a way to illustrate what I had already learned. Sorting a fleece, feeling resistance while spinning, comparing two yarns, or seeing how a fibre behaved in a textile often raised questions that I wouldn’t have reached through reading alone.
I started this project wanting to understand Ontario wool.
I finished it much more interested in how we come to know a material in the first place.
Where I’m Going Next
Questions I’m carrying forward
How is knowledge produced through physically working with materials?
What can tactile experience communicate that written description cannot?
How might material knowledge move more effectively between producers, makers, researchers, and the public?
These questions have grown directly out of my work with Ontario wool, but I don’t think they belong only to wool.
I’m interested in what happens when making is treated as a way of investigating rather than simply producing an outcome. How knowledge develops through touch, repetition, comparison, experimentation, and experience, and how that knowledge can be documented and shared without losing the qualities that make it material.
This is the direction I want to continue exploring through future research and practice.
Research Output
Selected outcomes
- MA Major Research Project – Untapped Potential: Exploring the Role of Ontario-Produced Wool in Sustainable Textile Practices, Toronto Metropolitan University, 2026
- MA Fashion Symposium – Research presentation, Toronto Metropolitan University, April 2026
- Three Minute Thesis (3MT) – “Where Did Our Wool Go?”, April 2026
- International Textile and Apparel Association / ITS Symposium – Research poster and three-minute presentation, Montréal, 2026
- Campaign for Wool Canada – Invited presentation on Ontario wool research, May 2026
- Sheep Portrait – Research-creation work developed from individually sourced Ontario sheep fleeces, 2026
- Breed Study Book – Tactile material study documenting and comparing Ontario fleeces, 2026