Curious if anyone here has also experimented with Tencel–specifically tencel–polyester blends? If you read Lenzig's literature, you would think tencel is a miracle fiber/fabric, warm as wool, strong as, cool as linen, as absorbent as cotton, as strong as polyester, as soft as silk, super eco/sustainable, blah, blah blah.
I think it's over hyped certainly, but it does have some interesting properties. It does seem to dry noticeably faster than cotton, fairly warm when not wet, cooling when wet, usually very soft, and so far does seem pretty strong and durable for a semi-natural fabric. Also seems to have good odor prevention properties.
I have a range of tencel stuff. Actually nothing 100% tencel, but some pants which are a combo of tencel and polyester (a few pairs), some loose fabric which is 70% tencel and 30% wool, a couple of shirts that are tencel and polyester blend (highest is 85% tencel and lowest is 56% tencel), and a linen-tencel blend shirt.
Like the tencel-polyester blends for better overall moisture management, though obviously some of the odor prevention is lost. I'm going to buy some 55% tencel and 45% nylon socks soon to see how those fair. Like with linen, would love to find some tencel-nylon fabric for sale by yard, but seems like i can't find any so far unless i order huge bulk direct from China.
Folks might wonder why a primarily cellulostic fiber and fabric is actually fairly warm and somewhat quickish drying. My understanding is that it's because the fibers have an interesting combo of being very fine, round, but with nano fibrils. The nano fibrils are like super fine hairs that branch off from the main fiber core. Hence traps more air and also disperses moisture faster. Something about this property is also why it's unusually strong for a semi-natural fiber (so i've read), but i don't understand that myself.
Anyways, any others with related experience, thoughts, opinions, etc? I bring it up, because it's a very little mentioned fiber/fabric here. If you do a search, most of the mention of tencel has been by me.
As noted earlier, i find it interesting that the new technical baselayer company headed by the former Polartec owner/CEO, is doing Alpaca-Tencel blends. Wished they went into more detail about why they chose that combo–particularly why they added some tencel to the Alpaca.
