Finest Paper Yarn + Water = ?

Finest Paper Yarn after four days in a glass of water

Two of the main questions by our customers is “What happens if paper yarn gets wet?” and “Will it dissolve?”. The anserwers are “Not much” and “Certainly not”.

Basically when paper yarns and paper twines get wet the same happens as when a sheet of paper gets wet: they “move” a bit due to the fibres soaking up water and as long as they’re wet they tear more easily. Once the paper yarns and twines or the sheet of paper are dry again they keep a bit of the shape they got while wet (e.g. it’s difficult to completly flatten out a sheet of paper once it has been wet and the same applies to paper yarns) but it will be as hard or easy to tear them as before.

A strand of Finest Paper Yarn still dry on top and wet at bottom

The “moving and twisting while wet part” is hard to explain and therefore we always suggest you try it out when you plan to do a rather loose piece (e.g. a loosely woven or knitted scarf). This natural reaction of the paper yarn can also be used as an advantage and incorporated into the design.

The two pictures above show two very different ways to deal with the behaviour of paper yarn: on top the wildest form possible: a piece of paper yarn stuffed into a glass of water and removed. On the bottom very controlled “moving” and “twisting”: button rings that have been tightly crocheted over a core and therefore couldn’t move at all (we dye all our jewelry made of finest paper yarn after it has been made; a dye bath can take up to three days and as you see it doesn’t harm the pieces).

Strong Paper Twines

Note that all the pictures on this article are of finest paper yarn.
Strong colored paper twines will hardly “twist” or “move” when they get wet because they’ve already been in a wet dye bath for hours or even days. The white and natural pa

Paper tends to have its own will and so do paper yarns and paper twines – probably one of the reasons why the girls in the PaperPhine studio can relate to it so well…