Identifying Yarns & Dyes to Tell Time Knowing the history of
material changes allows scholars to construct a timeline for
southwestern textile types. Changes in yarns, fiber quality, and
dyes occurred frequently during the 1800s. When these changes
are considered together with a textile’s designs and individual
history, production dates can be estimated to create a more
complete history of Navajo textiles. Handspun yarns include
single-spun strands of naturally colored, undyed sheep’s wool as
well as wool colored with vegetal or synthetic dyes. The
earliest Navajo sheep had clean, lustrous wool, while breeds
after the 1880s had curlier, greasier wool. Navajo spinners
cleaned and aligned the wool fibers with their fingers or with
wire-toothed combs, called carders, and twisted the wool
together on hand spindles. Raveled yarns came from bolts of
imported fabrics that weavers cut into strips and unraveled,
reweaving the yarns into blankets. Raveled yarns, often used in
groups of two to six, appear to have small