Core yarn is a type of yarn that has a filament fiber in the center with a different fiber wrapped around it. This type of yarn is of growing importance in the textile industry. It is important to predict the quality characteristics of a core yarn before production to prevent the faulty production of fabrics. Therefore, the development of predictive models is a necessity in the textile industry. In this study, artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) models are proposed to predict the quality characteristics of cotton/elastane core yarn, using fiber quality and spinning parameters. Principal component analysis and analysis of variance techniques are also used to reduce input dimensions, since high dimensional data may reduce a model’s potential for success in prediction. The prediction models are trained and tested using the data obtained from a textile production plant. The results of all the models are compared with each other on test data. Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE) and correlation coefficient (R) are used to assess the prediction power of the models. Although on most of the tests SVM models fared slightly better than ANN models, both models provide accurate predictions for most of the yarn quality characteristics. The results show that the best models have over 90% success rate in MAPE and R. In particular, the Coefficient of Variance of mass (CVm) along the yarn, hairiness and Reisskilometer quality characteristics of the cotton/elastane core yarn are predicted with 91%, 93% and 95% accuracy, respectively.