Despite the pills appear similarly in fabric surfaces, their structure and mechanism of formation are distinct depending on material categories and handling conditions. The lyocell and viscose knitted fabrics were abraded with short cycles in the wet state as an assessment method for pilling formation called rapid pitting test (RPT). The samples were immersed in different wetting agents and subsequently padded before short abrasion in Martindale tester. The results were compared with long abrasion, besides 5-235 cycles of washing and drying The samples were rated and these results were correlated with the changes in the physical parameters obtained in the dry and wet state. The correlation showed the feasibility of RPT in wet state with short-abrasion cycles, in lieu of long cycles and W-D cycles. Furthermore, the image analysis of single pills formed by different methods and the inner/outer pill structure may reflect the pilling mechanism and yield a comprehensive view of the whole process. Instead of conventional Martindale test, the easy-handling WIT can be applied for cellulosic fabrics, in which wet samples are abraded in short cycles fulfilling two important demanding factors during test performance: test of material in the wet state and reduced testing time. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.