Polar Fleece Fabric Factory Directory

What Polar Fleece Is

Polar fleece begins as a plain knitted fabric, almost always polyester filament, which is then brushed to raise a dense forest of fine fibres from its surface and sheared to a uniform height. The loft of that brushed surface is the insulation: still air held between fibres resists heat loss, and because polyester itself absorbs very little water, fleece keeps insulating when damp, dries fast, and can be wrung out in the field, the properties that made it the standard mid-layer for hiking, skiing and sailing. The trade grades it by weight, micro fleece at the light end for base layers and linings, then the familiar 100, 200 and 300 series, each step thicker, warmer and bulkier than the last.

Finishes decide how a fleece behaves beyond warmth. Anti-pill treatment on the face slows the little balls of tangled fibre that hard wear raises, and is the single biggest visible quality difference between fleeces at retail. Water-repellent finishes shed light rain, windproof versions laminate a membrane between two fleece faces at the cost of breathability, and recycled-polyester fleece, now a large share of production, diverts plastic bottles into yarn with performance close to virgin fibre. A good fleece keeps its loft after washing and compression; a poor one mats flat, and matted fleece is just a thick jersey with none of the air that did the work.

Where Polar Fleece Is Used

Outdoor and active clothing is the centre: jackets, pullovers, vests, hats, gloves, scarves and children's snowsuits, plus linings for shells and footwear. Workwear and uniforms take fleece for the same warmth-per-weight in warehouses, delivery and outdoor trades, and the home takes it in blankets, throws, pet beds and bedding, where its washability and low cost per warm night are hard to beat. Medical and care settings use fleece blankets that launder hot and dry fast. At the lightest weights, micro fleece serves as a next-to-skin layer and as the soft face of softshell laminates, so one fabric family covers the whole layering system from skin to storm layer.

The two listings below are this directory's polar fleece mills, each linked to its Fabric Mills by Name profile: Alok Textile Industries of India and Changshu Sunwell Knitting Textile Co., Ltd. of China. Both are large integrated knitting and finishing operations, which fits fleece production: the value sits in the brushing, shearing and finishing lines as much as in the knitting, so fleece concentrates in mills big enough to run the full process. Neither has been removed: no listing was verified dead, and this directory's standing rule is to keep a listing when in doubt. Thank you for using the Apparel Search Fabric Mill Directory.

Specifying and Caring for Polar Fleece

Specify fleece by series weight, face finish (anti-pill grade), recycled content if claimed, and width, and test a sample by washing and compressing it: loft that returns after a pack-down and a wash is the product being bought, and a face that pills in a ten-wash test will pill in a season of wear. Check both faces on double-faced cloth, confirm colour fastness on the deep shades fleece sells in, and for garment work confirm the stretch direction, since fleece knits give across the width and a pattern cut off-grain will not hang as sampled. Laminated windproof fleece should be sampled as the laminate, not as its component cloths.

Care is where fleece earns its reputation for ease, with two cautions. It washes warm, dries faster than almost any other warm fabric, and needs no ironing, which in fact it must never get, since iron heat melts the fibre tips and glazes the surface. Wash fleece separately or with other synthetics, because its raised surface picks up lint from cotton towels and tees; a tumble dry at low heat restores loft better than line drying. Over time hard-used fleece loses loft and should be retired to lighter duty, and like all synthetics it should be kept from open flame, which it melts under rather than resists.

Polar Fleece Fabric Mills Listed Here