Alpaca fleece… the perfect natural bedding filling

In comparison with other natural fibres, alpaca fleece offers the perfect fibre for bedding products. Apart from its unique attributes that make it so much in demand for fashion and apparel articles, it has several outstanding features which make it so well suited for bedding that it is surprising that it has only recently been fully developed.

Softness

Alpaca fleece is very soft to the hand due to its unique fibre surface. Under a microscope, alpaca fleece has a very smooth surface with very low cuticle-scales which are one quarter of those of wool. This means that alpaca fleece feels "slippery" and beautifully soft when compared to a similar micron (thickness) wool fibre. The luxurious softness is one of the fleece's outstanding features. With experienced preparation and processing, pure alpaca quilts are dramatically softer than any other natural fibre.

Softness is important as it feels good over your body but also it is important for its warmth. Ideally your quilt should "snuggle" or wrap around your body to trap air that is naturally heated to keep you warm. A stiff quilt filling or quilt casing can create larger air pockets around your body which take time and energy to heat to keep warm.

Lightweight & Warm

Alpaca fleece is very unique in that it has a semi hollow core which the species have developed over thousands of years to protect the animal from the extremities of its alpine origins in the Andes mountains, where it can be very cold in winter with extremes at up to 3,000 metres and very warm in summer months with high radiation for the sun. Thus, alpaca fleece has very unique thermal properties designed to keep the animal warm in winter yet cool in summer.

Compared to other natural fibres, alpaca fleece offers an outstanding warmth to weight ratio ie lightweight yet warm. In several independent laboratory tests we have received reports that confirm that in bedding quilts, alpaca fleece is warmer than wool and other natural fibres. Alpaca fleece is amazingly warm and feels so light in weight. It is ideal for sufferers of Rheumatism, arthritis and other health related concerns.

Thermal balance

Studies have consistently confirmed that sleeping comfort is highly dependent upon the body achieving its own unique optimal temperature balance for a restful and revitalising nights sleep. If during the natural sleeping cycle, the body is too warm or too cold, the human body will either consciously or subconsciously adjust its position in bed, thereby causing a disruption to the natural sleep cycle. The optimal bedding filling adjusts itself to the body and its external conditions.

Moisture Absorbency

It is also well recognized that the average person will lose up to 400millilitres of moisture per night through perspiration. It is very important that this moisture is wicked away from the body to the outer bedding cover to keep the sleeper dry during the night. Alpaca fleece naturally absorbs moisture, up to thirty percent of its own weight, to keep you dry and warm in winter and cool in summer.

Loft & Resiliency

As noted above, a quilt works by trapping air around the body which is heated by natural body warmth. Ideally a quilt should be filled with a fibre that is thermally efficient and with a good loft level. This is to avoid not using a lot of energy or time to reach a sleeper's optimal temperature. A high loft quilt filled with an inefficient filling can be just as cold as a quilt with insufficient fill. Alpaca quilts have an excellent thermal efficiency and do not require a high loft fill weight to be warm.

Strong & Durable

Alpaca fleece has high tensile strength, compared with other natural fibres and in bedding, this feature is important for a longer life. Fibre strength is also important in quilts as the individual fibres are much less likely to break during use, thereby causing the loss of evenness of a quilt's filling distribution across the quilt.

Natural & Chemical Free

Other natural animal fibres require extensive chemical scouring treatments to remove Lanolin, and acid carbonizing to remove their smell for use in bedding products. Alpaca fleece is a very clean natural fibre and does not require the use of environmentally damaging chemical or potentially unhealthy treatments for use in bedding.