A fiber that is so unique and versatile that it leads to people calling it the fabric of their life, that is cotton. Hundred Percent Cotton brings it all to you. 

Cotton is a favorite fabric whether going to the park with friends or getting a good night’s sleep after a big trip. We work in it, play in it and celebrate big events in cotton. We also sleep surrounded by it and eat foods cooked in cottonseed oils. It’s also a beautiful crop that dots the Southern landscape.

This site is dedicated to covering cotton from farm to fashion. Every article posted here will connect to the crop, hence the name & URL HundredPercentCotton.com!

My love for cotton has been discussed at length over the past nine years as I dove into social media head first. I have written hundreds of articles about cotton and recorded dozens of videos on it too!

It feels strange to launch a new site and already have a few hundred posts on it (actually I launched two new sites today — check out JPlovesLIFE too if you enjoy travel, food & farms). But the content seemed to take a backseat over the years and there was so much more to say. Besides, cotton deserves to take center stage and with this site, it clearly does! 

I appreciate a couple of friends for encouraging me when I talked about the idea, wondering whether it would really interest others. While I am not sure this is a case of if you build the site, they will come.

I’m building and I hope you enjoy it here and share it with your friends too.

If you’d like to help

Since some of the people who read the site have been so supportive, I thought I may leave a few ideas on ways you can be a part of the site & my work here.

Most of us who create content online because we are really passionate about a topic and communications. Creating that content can be teamwork or pretty solitary at times. Either way, it almost always feels great when others want to help.

A few years ago I wrote a short piece about the top 7 ways to support great content. I’ll give you (and the readers of JPlovesLIFE) the CliffNotes version today:

1. Check out more of the content — Browse the site, see what you may have missed. The home page helps you find cool pages & features I am especially proud of.
2. Subscribe so you get the new stuff — Right there on the sidebar, you can enter your email address so you automatically get new posts! Besides, I’m considering doing some fun subscriber only things… that means I’ll need to know how to find you!
3. Follow on your various social media channels — I make it easy! All the links are at the top of every page! We love it when people click those buttons, love it even more when folks interact with us there!
4. Comment on posts — When you read something, if you agree or disagree, we enjoy hearing your thoughts. Also, when you comment, it makes it more likely that others will grow so more people can see it.
5. Share content you really enjoy or find thought-provoking — When you read something you think your friends, family, social media connections, etc would find interesting, please share it. Iharing it along with a personal comment will cue your friends as to why you are sharing & why they should read.
6. Got an awesome idea that would be great on the site? Tell me! Got a question about something? Ask! — Sometimes, when you are creating content you may waffle on ideas. There are ideas around but maybe none that really grab your imagination today. Your questions or suggestions, may just get me back to the writing frame of mind!
7. Support efforts financially — As content creators put more time and effort into what they write, shoot or record, they spend more money on technology, support services, etc. This site is a “side hustle” for me and the redesign needed to get to this point was a big investment. I have a shop that I make a bit of money from items (some brand new for this launch!) and have now started a Hundred Percent Cotton patreon page for people who want to this continue to get bigger and better! If you have other ideas for grants, ads, etc., please let me know!

Enjoy!

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Looking forward to seeing what all comes from @JPlovesCOTTON’s new site that is all cotton! Subscribe so you can stay in the loop! ” quote=”Think some of your tweets will be interested? Please share & tell them to come the way! ” theme=”style1″]

The post The New Website for All Things Cotton — Hundred Percent Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

If you have known me long, you know I have enjoyed going to Austin for SXSW the last few years. It is a conference where people come from all areas of culture and talks about what matters to them and they think should matter to the rest of the planet. I’m sure you see how cotton deserves a spot on the SXSW stage!

I really do love the beautiful crop and the fabrics and oils, etc that come from it. And when a fellow blogger saw how I regularly put my love of cotton online, she told me she worked with people in developing countries who produce cotton textiles and loved it too. Someone else had been asking me about SXSW, and next thing I knew we were talking about whether or not the two of us should get a panel together. Fast forward to August and we need your help to make cotton get to the SXSW stage.

This video will give you an idea of what we would like to get in front of the SXSW crowd:

We have invited other perspectives to join us as we talk about the full life-cycle of cotton from growing the plant to sewing the fabric into products we use like sheets and what happens to them after. Thinking about the impacts the crop has on our small towns and rural landscapes here in the US as well as the small towns and big cities globally where the textiles are made into the clothes and home goods that we can enjoy for years.

We put a lot of work into the proposal and the process at SXSW includes getting support from the community to show the idea would draw attendees. This is where you come in because whether you have attended before, think you may go sometime or simply think others attending should hear about the sustainability of cotton, you can help us by voting and commenting on the page SXSW launched today. There are a few steps:

• Sign in or create a login & password at panelpicker.sxsw.com August 6 – August 30, 2019.
• Check out the SXSW web page for From Grow to Sew: Exploring Cotton’s Journey panel.
• After reading the summary & watching the video, look for the button that says “vote up” in the top left.
• Cast your vote & feel free to leave a comment about an area of the topic you are interested in, things you’d like to know, etc.
• Browse some of the other panels if you have a bit of time. You can search by keywords or see some great ones friends and colleagues submitted on a wide range of food & farm topics like climate smart agriculture, soil health and food waste and others on broader cultural topics like misinformation and analytics.

If you have submitted an idea or find other awesome talks submitted for SXSW 2019 that you think I’d like to know about, please drop links in the comments. I have been putting together a list of the various panels I think should make it that I will share soon.

(Confession: some of this originally appeared on my LinkedIn profile, and this would be far more exciting than when I talked about haters on social media there ).

The post To Get Cotton on a New Stage at SXSW, I Need Your Help appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Now and then, I have the chance to talk to the fabric experts at Cotton Incorporated and I have been meaning to write up some of the care tips I’ve learned during my cotton loving years. I like to keep my clothes, sheets, etc looking good for a long time and a large part of that is how I deal with them. So let’s talk about how I do my laundry, cause I’ll admit, I look at things a bit differently than I used to.

Laundry Frequency & Settings

Obviously clothes that get worn for exercise, or hot and sweaty days, get food on, end up in some area with strong smells, etc are going to be washed as early as possible. But I try to take it easy on my jeans, etc by not laundering them any more than needed. Washing and drying are tough on fabric, colors, etc. So I slow my roll there reducing spin speed and washer time both. And some of my clothes get put on a drying rack or hung rather than thrown in the dryer. I also try to keep temperatures and times run down.

Sorting Laundry

I can remember my mom doing towels as loads of laundry… she always had quite a few with four kids, but it wasn’t til later I realized she probably did this for other reasons too. Towels are a perfectly good example of the way I sort laundry.

I want to sort the laundry to make fabrics have longer lifespan so to do that you want to separate based on a few categories:

• Fabric Type — Knits (especially synthetics) are really different from woven fabrics. You want to choose cycles, carefully. I love the delicate cycle and frequently pick it.
• Colors — I always separate lights, brights and darks, new clothes get washed separately to be sure they are fabric safe especially if they are red!
• Fabric Weight — This week I have worn a wide range of clothes — some days it was 100 degrees and a few we had high 70s. A thick sweatshirt takes longer to dry than a fine Pima shirt.

Inside Out

Also, while sorting, I turn most of my clothes inside out because when fibers and fabrics rub up against each other there can be a bit of fuzz/piling that you’d rather limit. I know it sounds like a hassle, but I try to just take them off leaving them wrong side out.

Choosing Detergent / Additives

When I was in college, I bought whatever detergent was on sale the most. Later, I thought dirty clothes need lots of detergent. I learned better. Some detergents can be pretty hard on fabrics and extra detergent is wasted. I stick with brands that I know how done the testing to check how colors remain, etc. I’m a Tide girl. And I almost always use fabric softener — much like conditioner on my hair, it keeps the fibers together rather than having a bunch of fly-away fibers.

Did I miss something?

The post How a Cotton Lover Does Laundry Differently appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

The post Surprised by the Tech in Laundry & Kitchen Appliances at Best Buy appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

It has been a joke told for years in the cotton industry. In fact, each March (if you live in the Mid-South) and April (if you live in Texas) the giggles are heard as people who work in cotton say they are spending their weekend at the gin show. Some of our friends (and sometimes family) have a different first impression when they think of gin. Heck you may be one of those folks!

As someone who has a friend who really enjoys a good gin & tonic with a twist of lime…. I get it. The word has a different meaning all together — we think of big machines or a big building holding those machines that separate cotton lint from the seed. It’s another one of those reasons that a while back I wrote a working dictionary of cotton terms.

Really I know every industry has it’s own vocabulary but you have to admit that going to the gin show to see how much a stripper costs these days makes a person giggle, even if you know the stripper is a harvester lingo! And there have to be cotton farmers who go to the Lubbock show to at least talk about a guy about strippers.

Seriously though, cotton gins are a staple in southern communities. Gins are part of the infrastructure — remember how I did the math on the impact of one gin in jeans? They are usually owned by a group of farmers in the area. And since gins have to start processing cotton in the fall with harvest, spring is a time when the gin has usually shut down and is thinking about the

With the confusion, I decided to clear things up a bit and show you some of the things the gin show does!

• Showcase equipment for farms and gins.
• Call meetings on various technical, marketing and regulatory topics. (That sometimes will make a person want a drink no lie!)
• Gives people a chance to catch up, talk about planting plans.
• There are various cotton and cotton seed products that can be purchased, too!

Here’s my highlight reel. Hope you enjoy it.

The post A Gin Show, No Tonic or Limes — What Happens at a Cotton Gin Show appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love the excitement behind the question I get asked each spring — “Can you get me some cotton seed for my garden?” reminds me that other people would like to see the wonder that is cotton seed turning into a plant with broad leaves, slowly putting on buds that become flowers and ultimately form those beautiful bolls we all think about. (Thanks Kelly for the phot!)

And as someone who loves her container garden, I get the joy of picking out some new things to try each year (confession: my rhubarb didn’t make it last year).

And I have to tell you that when I lived in NY, I actually grew a cotton plant in my office! And you may remember a blogger who planted cotton asked about why the boll was so tiny.

Simple Question, Complex Answer

The question to anyone asking is simple — like asking about basil seed in a local garden center, seed catalog or Lowes, but they haven’t seen cotton seed there, so they know there is a little twist. And they ask me.

Every time I get the question, I pause. I want to answer excitedly with resources on where to go and yet, the weight of knowing how cotton seed works, how it is sold, where it can be planted… well, that is a lot more complicated than a tweet. So let me see if I can go through this step-by-step.

Why can’t U.S. gardeners easily find cotton seed?

Believe it or not, as far as I know, one of the major reasons gardeners can’t buy cotton seed is because bugs like cotton too much! Cotton is a major crop in states across the Southern US and farmers have integrated pest management programs to help control the crops most devastating insects.

One of history’s most well-known plagues in agriculture is the boll weevil. The weevil wreaked havoc on the crop for several years even though it is not native to US. The fact that it can get established and multiply quickly has led to specific control steps under what’s called an eradication program. Farmers have had routine education and monitoring programs. They have been directed to shred stalks (kind of mow the remaining plants down) after harvest to make it harder for boll weevils to survive. They have paid money to the state to do a coordinated program. So for that reason, most states where cotton is grown have sought to limit ornamental cotton.

So you can see that cotton may be a bit different from basil seed.

Would just a little bit of seed cause a problem?

I have heard it before… “Well, maybe I could just get a handful of seed from a farmer.” There are a couple of reasons I wouldn’t do this.

• First, this is a way to get it but it really doesn’t help with the insect problem.
• Second, most cotton seed is sold under a license to the purchaser for the various traits and I’m not licensed. The license includes the various things to do to be a good steward of seed, including insect resistance methods, etc.
• And finally, seeds frequently have various coatings on them to protect from insects, diseases, etc and handling.

So, you see, I find myself not growing any cotton even though I love it. I love it from a distance and leaving the growing it to farmers.

The post Can you get me some cotton seed for my garden? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This is one of those weeks where it is easy for me to wish I was traveling even though I am so excited to have spent the weekend at home. The reason I kind of wish I was traveling? The National Cotton Council held it’s annual meeting this weekend and you know how much I love some of my cotton folks! But it is also a great time to catch up on what’s happening and what the expectations are for 2018. It is a topic that gets a lot of mindshare right now as farmers are buying seed and getting ready for planting across the belt.

One of my favorite parts of the annual meeting is the announcement of the planting intentions survey results. This year the survey found that U.S. cotton farmers intend to plant a bit more cotton — 13.1 million acres. Last year it was 12.6 million so the new figure means 3.7 percent more. I’d like to think that’s cause I bought a couple new pairs of jeans and some heavy cotton sweaters & sweatshirts this month!

Since several of you have routinely seemed interested in the facts and figures of cotton, I want to share some of the details from the report too. And since some of us aren’t numbers people, I’m making a video version of it for us! Visual learners like me can choose how this works right?

A few facts to give a shout out to from the NCC release:

• On average, each acre yields 842 pounds (less than two bales)
• Most regions of the Cotton Belt expect to increase acres, but the Mid-South is down 0.1 percent with a 5.5 percent reduction in Mississippi being the biggest drop in the region. Arizona has a sizeable drop as well leading the Far West to be down 6.8 percent.
• Farmers in the Southwest are really driving the increase. Kansas farmers intend to plant 55.3 percent more!  While Texas acres aren’t rising that much, the state will likely remain home to more than half of the U.S.’ planted area.

And in case you wonder how much cotton is planted in your part of the world, here’s the chart detail:

The post How many acres of cotton will U.S. farmers plant in 2018? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Walking through airports, chilling at a concert or just wandering the aisles of the grocery store, I’ve long loved wearing t-shirts to share my favorite farmers, crops, etc. It is such an easy way to start a conversation. I’ve bought quite a few from various sites and some beautiful people have given me some.

With the new logo, my creative juices surged and I decided to do something a few friends have done. I’ve designed some things that I hope will make it easier to share the love of cotton (some 100% easy and some are a blend of fibers). And I took a while to unveil it because I wanted to be sure of the way things would look.

From now on, there is a new section on the navigation bar — the site’s store. And at the end of this post, there is a discount code to help get this moving along!

Fun Stuff, Cotton Themes

There are lots of places where you can get a shirt that has the Cotton Inc logo on it or something if you live in small towns in the South, but I rarely get there and some friends never do.

Besides, I have a different relationship with cotton than some. And my humor is a bit different, especially when it comes to cotton vocabulary. Those things come together for a few primary themes for clothes, etc in the online store.

Boll Buster

With the fall upon us, cotton farmers are trying to be sure all the bolls in the fields are burst open. And yet, when you think of people sometimes the ones that get out of hand… they may be called something close to boll buster. So… there are some things that sort of suggest that.

You can see the onesie for kids above, and then one for adults is a bit more brazen about it.  You can see the products in this group by filtering the catalog for boll buster (or click on this link).

Cotton Pickin’ Good Time

Harvest is definitely a favorite time of year! I have so much fun getting out to see cotton pickers roll, that I had to think of a way to put them on shirts.

I even went through the process of building red and green pickers to look a bit differently so I knew I would be ok with folks with different allegiances.

And I’ve really stoked about what I came up with. Even if I’m the only one that ever has one, this was worth it. I got a regular t-shirt in green and the jersey you see above in red. These are on the cotton pickin’ good time list.

JPlovesCOTTON and I Do Too!

This site expresses my love of cotton on the regular, but it energizes me to no end how many other people share an intense passion for the crop that turns into our favorite clothes.

I hadn’t even thought of doing something along this line but a good friend and regular reader who I gave a preview too asked about men’s shirts with just the logo on it. I whipped this up and she celebrated!

It is a short spin on the new logo, crisp, clean and inclusive. There are a few things in the I do too! category, including coffee mugs.

You Never Forget Your First Stripper

Not everyone is satisfied with a cotton pickin’ good time, some want to see those strippers go for a whirl!

If you’ve ever driven or done a ride along during High Plains cotton harvest, you probably know I’m talking about a dance that is a bit different than some folks think of as they see the word stripper.

I just keep giggling at the thought of the looks on the faces of people…. only wish I had thought of the idea before I did my quality check order. Have got one on its way to me though — check out the You Never Forget Your First Stripper category.

Early Harvest Means Rewards

I love getting out for harvest early in the season. That’s when the rewards are finally coming in. With that in mind, I thought I’d share the excitement of all of this by putting a discount code on the site for a couple of weeks.

I have no idea whether folks will want to pick up anything, but if you do, enter the promo code HARVEST17 and you’ll get 17 percent off whatever you buy in the next 2 weeks (ends at midnight CST Sunday, October 6).

[clickToTweet tweet=”Funny shirts and all that show a love for cotton. Gotta pick a fave or two! ” quote=”Share so your friends can get in on the cottony fun! “]

The post Join Me in Showing a Love of Cotton with an Online Shop appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Sometimes I still shake my head in disbelief that my coming up with something to uses on Twitter, has stuck with me as a personal brand of sorts. But once JPlovesCOTTON started to stick, I embraced it, have even purposefully encouraged it. That takes a new step now.

If you are seeing this in your subscription email, you wouldn’t see the new logo that’s at the top of the website, so let me put it in here now. Oh wait, there are actually two logos — one is being used in the header and the other is waiting for this big reveal. 

I hope you think they fit. They have a bit of energy behind them in my opinion…. positive energy for me and I hope for you too.

Why have a logo?

For a while, I’ve wanted to change the look of the blog…. and since JPlovesCOTTON became a brand for me years ago, it seemed I should just go ahead and let that lead. And it seemed like a logo seemed the perfect start. Problem was, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from it.

The Process of Design

Having worked in marketing a long time, I know that can take quite a process. Still, I wanted to get to work on it. Yeah, you can see that I made some bad decisions early on!

I had one go at it with a dear friend who really was happy to help. He did great work but I had trouble really articulating what I wanted. It made the design process arduous. I wanted to love one of the concepts he came up with (as did he) but my lack of direction made it painful for both of us.

A year after I really wanted that to work, I decided to go a totally different route because I saw the logo that my friend Natasha had created for her We Sow We Grow community garden in Chicago. That got me thinking about what I wanted to capture with a logo and with that I asked who had designed hers and got in touch with Mandi Buckner.

Working with Mandi Buckner on a New Logo

Mandi has designed quite a few logos so she had a whole series of questions for me on what types of elements, emotions I wanted to convey, how the design would be used and more. We talked about schedules and timing and of course we discussed fees and what would be provided at the end of the process.

You can see her first take at right. She totally got me and my mind raced with ways to fine tune it. Lucky for me I got these the same week I got my iPad Pro so I could play with ideas as I traveled.

That was when I decided the design could be strong enough to be simplified and I asked her to do two versions for me, still wondering whether I would be able to do it. She worked on some things and we were both thrilled.

Lots More to Do

So the logo is a start. I need to get the blog redesigned some more but it was safe holding onto the logo… something I’ve been doing for months. I’m ready to put it out there. Let you guys see it, tell me what you think.

And I have decided to start it with a new project, but I think I’ll write another post for that story…. for now, I want to find myself some lunch!

I Would Love to Hear Your Reactions!

The post It’s Been a Long Time Coming — JPlovesCOTTON Has a Logo! appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

For days, I check on several friends each time I hop on social media. I have been watching to see how they are in dealing with Hurricane Harvey bearing down on them. First concerns are for the people, but I can’t help looking to see how the farms are doing. Hurricanes have ripped through friends’ crops too many times, I’ve seen farmers prepare for hurricanes and deal with the aftermath.

When a friend sent me a message asking me questions about cotton in Harvey, I decided to talk with my dear friends Kelly and Jon Whatley who grow cotton, milo and more in South Texas. They have already faced what we hope is the worst of it in their area, so took a bit of time to help me understand how it is going.

First, I am glad to have seen you posting that you are all fine. Can you tell me what the storm was like in its height where you are? What’s it like today?

Very noisy. Landfall was at night, so we couldn’t see what was flying around or how bad it looked. We are in the middle of a field with no protection, but that also means no neighbor’ debris flying around either. Saturday morning, we woke up to water standing in the yard and lots of limbs down, tree and plant debris. We had power Friday night until around 8:00 PM. Luckily we have a generator that runs off a tractor’s PTO shaft so we have had electricity.

What you have heard from friends and family along the coast? What’s it like for them?

Yes. Some total devastation other very little damage. One friend (Hannah Miller) lost contact with her family near Rockport in the height of the storm but ended up locating them after some scary hours of not knowing. Her family’s home and farms are terribly damaged but her family is safe. Friends in Aransas Pass and Rockport will be assessing the damage and working to clean up/repair for a long time.

(Editor’s note — I was watching Hannah’s updates closely. She evacuated but some family stayed behind. She’s since returned to the area with supplies to help.)

Any estimates on how long it will take to get power back and other services, etc?

Some people are getting power back now. Officials are saying it could be up to 10 days for some areas. Our house is the very end of our line. I am afraid we may be the very last to get electricity back. Most water districts are on a boil notice if they even have water. Electricity for the pumps to fill the water towers still hasn’t been restored. We have never lost water.

I had watched cotton harvest with such excitement. If you backed up the clock to two weeks ago, what would you have told me about the 2017 crop? (Here’s photo from July — how cute are they?!?!)

I would have told you we were looking at a fantastic crop with historical cotton high yields. It was the best cotton crop of our 24 crops. Spirits were high in the South Texas farming community.

Where are you now? Modules in the field? Some of the crop ginned?

All of our crops are totally harvested. There was cotton sitting on every spot on all the gin yards in the Coastal Bend. 50% of our cotton had been ginned. Rest at gin yard or fields. The ginners try to store the unginned modules on pads or higher ground, but when it comes to a hurricane, all bets are off. The tarps help protect the cotton some, but many tarps blew off. The round bales/modules are better protected since they cover more cotton surface.

Here are some of the photos Kelly’s taken (remember she’s on my list of top farm Instagrammers for a reason). I’ll try to explain what we are looking at. This first one is a shot of modules (some round and some rectangular, some call the round ones round bales) waiting to go to the gin. 

You can see some of them are sitting in standing water.

What about other crops? Neighbors up the coast?

Other crops harvested here. Up the coast, early news is devastation for unharvested crops. Reports of gins closer to the coast heavily damaged with modules blown away.

I’ve heard conflicting information on crop insurance, can you tell us what you have found out?

Crop insurance covers historical value, not value in the field. This was a banner crop and the insurance levels does not meet banner yield levels. There are huge deductibles, and we are not to the point to know details yet. Crop insurance is not very helpful at this late stage. We don’t know how it will all shake out since we’ve never been in this situation.

What happens next for the farms in that area?

First we have to dry out & assess the damage. We found some trees that took out fence sections at the ranch, so we will get to fixing those first to keep the cattle contained. We are used to waiting on Mother Nature, and will have to wait for the rain to stop.

How will the farmers in Texas deal with all those wet modules? How will they dispose of them?

Again, the waiting game. Have to let the modules dry out. Then assess if the cotton is ginnable or not. One of the problems with agriculture – nothing is immediate. We have to wait for nature.

The cleanup everywhere else may be over but the gins and farmers will just be getting to the point to make decisions. Even if the cotton is ginnable, the quality is much lower. Cotton is graded on quality, so the grades will take a hit. In turn, the farmer will get less money for his cotton.

More photos to share and understand what they are looking at from being ginnable, maintaining quality, etc. Some of the problems are similar to dealing with rain at harvest time because with all the water and warm temperatures, some of the seed that is still sitting in the module may start to sprout. Jon’s finger is pointing to a root that has emerged from a seed and if you look closely you can see several more. That really is difficult on a gin that is designed dry cotton lint and cotton seed.

This photo shows how incredibly bad the wind has been. The field that you are looking at had been picked. Winds from Harvey beat up the rectangular modules so much, it seems to have twisted the fiber back onto the plants! I couldn’t have imagined….

But this photo is even more illustrative of the point the Whatleys made… the round bales / modules definitely held together in the wind better. You can see that the plants in that section of the field are showing up as dark swaths. Wow.

Thoughts will stay with them for the coming future… Kelly said they may have some drone footage to share soon, but for now, there is more work to do.

The post How is Hurricane Harvey Impacting Texas Cotton Farmers? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.