What is Ring-Spun Cotton?

  You might notice that in our product descriptions, you see the words 'ringspun cotton'. What is this? and why is it different from regular cotton? Regular cotton is made from soft vegetable fibre, which comes from the seedpod of the cotton plant. This is made into strands of fibre. The strands of cotton fibre are then twisted together to make something called yarn. This is then woven together to make a section of material. This is the cotton you receive when the label on the garment says 100% cotton. A slightly different process is used to create Ringspun cotton. You start with the same cotton fibre strands, but this time the yarn is made by continuously twisting and thinning the strands. This creates a very fine rope of cotton fibres. The twisting makes the short hairs of cotton stand out, resulting in a stronger yarn, but significantly softer material. The more twisted the fibre, the softer the material becomes. If you take a certain amount of cotton fibre and created the standard cotton material (as mentioned at the start of this blog) and then took that same amount of cotton fibre and used the ringspun process, because of the twisting and thinning the ring-spun cotton would be a lighter weight than the regular cotton. Even though you may have a heavier weight standard cotton t-shirt, the ring-spun cotton t-shirt may very well be more durable (and definitely a lot softer) than the basic cotton t-shirt. This is why is is a favourite here at Print My Words.