New York wool goes to fashion school

Happy sheep trotting toward a fresh pasture inspired fiber science major Miriam Lourie's wool sock design: a creamy white stripe across a textured green knit that puckered like a gently rolling field.

Lourie is one of 9 budding fashion designers in Knitwear Design and Other Applications, a College of Human Ecology class where students are working with New York sheep farmers and wool processors to explore ways to grow the local industry.

New York weather makes sheep farming hard. Feeding hay through the winter means bits of vegetative matter get stuck in the wool. Fine-wool breeds like Merino and Rambouillet do better in drier climates. New York fiber farms tend to be small, producing enough wool for a boutique industry aimed at crafters, and meat-focused sheep farms raise breeds that produce wool that is too coarse for industrial knitting machines. But through a series of visits to regional farms and experimentation with local wool, students in the class are discovering its idiosyncrasies and charms.

"Understanding the whole process of how that material got to a finished product adds a level of intimacy with the yarn that I think helps in the design process," said Melissa Conroy, senior lecturer of human centered design in CHE and the instructor of Knitwear Design.

Conroy and doctoral student Paige Tomfohrde received a $10,000 grant from the New York Fashion Innovation Center to workwith fiber producers to develop yarn suitable for industrial knitting machines. The students are helping test the yarn and providing feedback.

"Problem solving is a big part of knitwear design," Conroy said. "Normally, we start with a design direction that leads us in choosing yarn. This semester, we start with the yarn and see where it takes us."

The artisanal quality of New York wool can make garments feel less mass produced, even as it presents logistical challenges.

"Yarn doing weird things is fun for us, as fashion designers," Conroy said. "It opens a path to discovery."

Through visits to farmers, processors and fiber artists around the state, including Crooked Creek Sheep and Wool in Brooktondale, New York, and Battenkill Fibers, a spinning mill in Greenwich, New York, Conroy's students studied every part of the local wool supply chain, from farming to shearing, cleaning and spinning. A grant from the Cornell Center for Teaching Innovationfunded their travel.

Back in the classroom, the students turned yarn specifically made for them at Battenkill Fibers into socks, featuring designs drawn from what they saw and learned during their visits.

The yarn had a personality of its own.

Fashion design major Lucy Jones '26 said fine-tuning the tension of the yarn to get her socks just right took patience. "Working with the wool, as opposed to the acrylic we worked with last semester, it feels like a much more human process," she said. "We met the sheep this wool came from."

The natural color and texture variation in the yarn reminded fashion design major Liriana Nezaj '27 of raw wood she saw at the farms. She chose to make mauve socks in a lacy pattern reminiscent of wood grain.

"It's fun to keep in mind where your materials actually come from," she said. "There are a lot of steps to get a wool garment to market."

Those steps start at the farm, where farmers work to keep their flocks healthy. Stress and disease can cause weak spots in a sheep's wool that can break when spun into yarn.

"The quality of sheep's wool is intertwined with how well farmers take care of their sheep," said Lourie '26.

Wool is one of the most thermally efficient fibers, and it's biodegradable, renewable and fire resistant. It can be used for fabric and rugs but also fertilizer, insulation and weed barriers.

"All of us growers, we love wool," said Crooked Creek Sheep and Wool owner Dr. Amy Glaser, DVM '87, Ph.D. '94. "We think it belongs in every household, in every aspect of your life, from what's on your floors to what's on your walls to what's on your beds to what's on your body."

The students' socks and process sketches will be on display, alongside pieces from the processors and designers they met during their field trips, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13 in the Jill Stuart Gallery in the Human Ecology Building.