6.3.1 Spinning Property

Kapok fiber is known as the soft gold in plants for its finest and lightest quality, highest hollowness, and most warm nature. Due to their wide lumen filled with air, their smooth surface, and low strength, kapok fibers are considered unfit for textile fabrics in the early years (Fengel and Wenzkowski 1986). With the development of technology, the spinning of 100 % kapok fibers beyond lap formation stage is not possible, but kapok yarn property and weavability could be improved through sizing or blended spinning (Yang and Jin 2008). To resolve the problem of pure kapok yarn such as low strength, much hairiness, poor wear resistance, and difficult to weave, sizing experiment of 27.8 tex pure kapok yarns was carried out in order to improve yarn performance and meet the requirements of weaving. According to the charac­teristics of kapok yarns, a mixed size composed of acid-modified starch and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was selected to size kapok yarns. The results show that low solid content helps size penetration and facilitates yarn strength and elongation improvement (Yang 2010). Furthermore, the spinning of kapok fiber blended with cotton fiber is largely successful. With an increase in kapok content in the blend, the yarn regularity and tenacity decrease, while the yarn extensibility increases. It is considered that kapok fiber can be blended with cotton for spinning yarn, but the content of kapok fiber should not be more than 50 %, or the blended yarn property and weaving processing will be effected (Dauda and Kolawole 2003 ; Yang et al. 2013). Also, the total cost of production of the yarns decreases significantly as the kapok content increases in the blend.