I got fleece yesterday and have washed it 4 times, no fabric softener. I have dryed it in my dryer after every wash. The water still pools on top! what am I doing wrong?!?!?!?!? It is anti-pill fleece if that makes any difference in how it works.
Yes, actually the anti-pill fleece can be much denser and less apt to wick. I'm wondering if you can post a close-up pic of what you have? If that's hard, then you might take a look at the images of fleece types online and post a pic of that:
If it looks different than these fleeces then you may not have a fleece you will work all that well. There are thousands of products sold as "fleece" so it's very easy to get the wrong product and then find it doesn't work. It seems that most people who complain seem to have had that as the biggest problem.
Was this a test piece or a full sized one? If big enough, you can always do a test run. Piggers pee so often that you can sit and watch to see what happens when they do take a pee pee on the fabric. If it "drags" across it then that is when you can imagine you would have problems.
In the testing, if the water pools or beads up and never goes through that is a big problem. If it pools, and then goes through in a few seconds you'll be okay. Once it goes through the fabric into the test absorbant pad/towel/whatever below --then run your hand across it. Does the fleece feel wet? It should feel barely wet at all. I can describe it as the difference between having a bath towel that you have used with fabric softener and one that hasn't. The softened towels kind of smoosh the water around, while a normal towel is "thirsty".
If your fleece isn't the right kind the only solution is to go on a quest for a more appropriate fleece that has wicking properties. I have some blankets told at Costco and Target that they called "Microfleece"...well...that was a misnomer. True Microfleece sold by the company called Malden Mills is a very wickable fabric and so wickable it's used in diaper liners to keep the wetness from baby's bums. However, these blankets that I have LOOK like it, but they do not allow any liquids to drain through them at all no matter how long of time elapses. I've had these blankets for 2 years and used them on my bed. A few months ago I thought I'd cut them up to use for pig bedding once they got too pilly. Low and behold, I was utterly shocked when I spilled my water bottle in bed one day and noticed that an hour later the water was still beading up on top. That got me to testing it, and indeed whatever this fleece is, it is not designed to wick away but instead to repel water.
Most fleece,
probably 90% is designed to repel rain. The most effective fleeces are those designed for inner linings of coats and are thin. They are also less expensive and more apt to pill than others. Anti pill fleeces can be a hit or miss. Almost any kind of fleece can be called anti-pilling, and that's part of the problem. In the US stores like "JoAnn's" will switch manufacturers all the time. They use the terms for their fleeces very loosely. Last time I was there, the fabrics they were calling "ant-pill alpine" was not anywhere near the quality of the stuff I got from them last year. They will never admit who their manufacturers are either..making it even harder to tell people what to use.
The most simple way to describe it, is that what is the most popular fleece for bedding is equivalent to Malden Mills 100 or maybe 200 wt Polar Fleece. Now, remember that's a
brand name. Polar fleece is like saying Kleenex. You can get a tissue, but it's not necessarily going to be the same thing as a Kleenex. Some places call different things polar fleece too. This leads to why we fleece users have such a hard time convincing folks why it works for us. This link (broken link removed) is a great education on fleece. It's about 'nappies" which is a British term for diapers. If you click and scroll down to the section on "Fleece" I found it helped me a great deal in my research on using fleece for bedding.
