Why top dyed yarn has variation?

Hi,

To understand Top Dyed yarns, its necessary to know about Melange yarns first.

A melage yarn is the yarn which is produced with various combinations of Raw White & Dyed Cottons or dyed fibres.

For example, if we produce a yarn with 100% Cotton, then it will call as normal "Raw White" yarn, or Grey yarn or Natural colored yarn or acru yarn.

Now if we mix 99% Raw White Cotton & 1% dyed Cotton (of any color), then it will called "Melange" yarn.

Similarly, we can generate hundreds & hundreds of shades by mixing various % of Cottons with various ratiOS.

All the formed yarns in same method will called "Cotton Melange Yarns".

Now lets consider the following combinations

99% Raw White Cotton + 1% Black Polyester

98% Raw White Cotton + 2% Black Polyester

95% Raw White Cotton + 5% Black Polyester

.

.

.

can generate many many shades with different ratiOS of dyed polyester & in different colors.

AND THE YARNS PRODUCED THROUGH THIS TECHNICES ARE CALLED AS "POLYESTER MELANGE YARNS", OR "HEATHER GREY YARNS" OR ALSO "TOP DYED" YARNS.

Therefore, generally the melange yarns of dyed Polyester combinations are to be referred as "Top Dyed" yarns.

But we cannot fix this definition specifically for "Top Dyed" also because there are many customers in Far-East countries, who has fixed the term "Top Dyed" for all kinds of Melange yarns. They never mention that whether these are Cotton Melanges or Polyester Melanges !!!

Just for additional informations, Melange yarns can also be produced with other fibres too like Viscose, Rayon, Bamboo, Modal, Coolmax, Tancel, Soyabean, Cashmere, etc. Hope it will help. In addition to above answer, please also note that fabrics produced with Melange yarns (either from Cotton melange, heather grey, or else) are not dyed further usually to make garments and fabric is used as it is.