I love spinning batts. I really love buying batts they are irresistible, the fiber version of a warm cinnamon roll - all fluffy and rolled up with sweetness. They are fun and easy to spin, depending on what I want from my yarn I spin them in one of two directions, the difference can be big, literally. The batts here are from Essential Fiber, Michelle makes beautiful batts, smooth but with sparkly and shiny surprises.

I spin my batts either with the grain (vertically) or against the grain (horizontally). My quick and easy batt prep is to strip the batt vertically. If I am spinning with the grain I lightly attenuate and spin from the end of each strip or pull it into one long roving. This direction gives fluffy woolly yarn.

When I spin against the grain, I roll each strip into a rolag by hand and attenuate my little fiber cigar into roving. I usually do three passes, slowly pulling so I don't break the fiber. See the difference in the two rovings? Working against the grain (right and bottom in the photos) mixes up the fibers even more and adds more air in the prep. The yarn from this predraft gives super fluffy yarn, lots of air and lots of squish.

Here are my two yarns, vertical predraft on the left and top, horizontal predraft on the right and bottom. You can see the extra air in the horizontally predrafted yarn, I wish you could feel them! It is a little harder for me to get a consistent draft with the extra fluffy roving, but I think it's a fair trade for that extra squish.

How do you spin batts?