Pilling is a fabric surface fault characterized by little pills of entangled fibres clinging to the surface. These are formed during wearing or washing by the entanglement of the loose fibres, which protrude from the fabric surface, and development of these into spherical bundles anchored to the fabric by a few unbroken fibres. These give a very unsightly look to the garments.

To determine the tendency to form pills, test specimens taken from the fabric sample are rubbed against each other under controlled conditions and the appearance of the test specimen after rubbing for the specified period is compared against standard rating photographs for grading the fabric under test.

 Technical details