If you are a fan of Hayden Panettiere, you know the actress has made a name for herself by playing the tomboy daughter of a football coach, a high school cheerleader and hero who can produce fire and a rising star in Nashville who has more than a few personal problems. Well, she is drawing attention to my favorite fiber now as a new spokesperson for Cotton Incorporated.

Have you seen that Hayden Panetierre cotton commercial? The new commercials featuring Panettiere singing her own unique version of the memorable “The Fabric of Our Lives” theme song started airing in April. And if you haven’t seen it, you really should check it out. And to make it really easy for you, I’m embedding the video here!

How is cotton featured in Hayden Paniettiere’s closet?

One of the cool pieces of the advertisements over the past five years has been seeing the different styles the various spokespeople have had. Hayden Paniettiere doesn’t disappoint as you saw in the commercial! She has a wide range of cotton clothing — from clothes that are campfire perfect, to trendy pieces for a night out on the town to something more formal. I mean check out a few of the outfits in these photos.

And a really cool feature on The Fabric of Our Lives site is the ability to check out the pieces in Hayden Panettiere’s closet. You can click on a piece and see where the outfit is from and it even takes you to another video of Paniettiere talking about the piece, how she pairs it with other things in her closet, etc. There’s also a Q&A with her generally talking about clothes, fashion and of course cotton:

How do you feel about cotton as a fabric?

What could be better than cotton? It’s my go-to. I can dress it up and wear it as a form-fitting dress, or dress it down as a soft and comfy tee. I know I’ll be fashionable and comfy either way. When I can look good AND feel good, I’m happy.

via Cotton: The Fabric of Our Lives: Hayden’s Profile.

Why advertise cotton?

I’ve previously written a post on the reasons for the ad campaign on cotton. The ad campaigns for cotton are funded through a commodity program that seeks to increase the marketability of my favorite fiber. And Cotton Inc. comes up with the awesome creative. The ads are funded by cotton farmers and the people who import cotton. The ads are designed to increase awareness in cotton and cotton farmers have an interest in keeping cotton top of mind, especially since the makers of all the synthetic fibers like polyester have big ad budgets, advertising is part of it.

But there are other things to funded through the monies farmers pay into Cotton Inc — research and development of textile processes, cotton production practices, etc which help keep cotton competitive with synthetic fibers in other areas or even help discover new uses.

More Information on Cotton

I love putting information about cotton together for the blog so let me start this section with the various resources here on the blog.

• The cotton category of posts includes pieces of all sorts — news, information, photos, etc. If its about cotton and on this blog, it should have been thrown in this category. Any time you are on the blog and interested in finding this set of posts you can just go all the way to the top of the screen and select cotton and you’ll get that done too. 
• There are also some groupings of posts within that category that help you find something more specifically. 
  • My series of Cotton 101 posts has about 20 posts in it a few of which are highlighted on this Cotton 101 page. Cotton 101 posts are the ones that talk through some of the basics of cotton. I’d love to know what I’m missing! 
  • To better understand about how others think & feel about cotton, I have a series of cotton guest posts. If you’d like to join the series, please read

    What is it that you love about cotton? Please join a series of cottony goodness!

To find our more about Cotton Inc. and the kind of things they put out about cotton clothes and textiles, you can check out:

• Websites for Cotton Inc include the fashion-oriented thefabricofourlives.com,
• There is a Facebook cotton page  (who doesn’t “like” cotton?)
• Fashionable tweets go out from @CottonFashion.
• And great videos are on the CottonFabricofOurLives YouTube Channel.

The post What’s with that Hayden Panettiere cotton commercial? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This fall, while in Kansas for the State of Now, I took the backroads from Hutchison toward the part of northwestern Oklahoma I called home for four years while I was in college. When I was driving through an “s” curve, I saw this sign and had to stop — yes, the cotton logo had demanded my attention! I thought I’d quickly snap a photo or two and get back on the road, but then a loaded truck came by and I realized the cotton gin was incredibly close. Just felt like I had to stop! Here are the photos I snapped and some of the things I saw that afternoon.

Driving down the road, I saw this sign & had to stop — Southern Kansas Cotton Growers Cooperative

A module truck drove by as I took the photo of the coop’s sign… I knew the gin had to be close by so I followed it! I went into the office while the driver had the module weighed in.

Self-portrait (that’s me Janice Person) at a cotton cooperative, modules in the background. It was a really windy day!

a cotton module (tightly compacted seed cotton straight from the field) enters the gin, and first step is it is pulled apart

These are the gin stands — the equipment that will separate cotton lint from cotton seeds

Closeup of the part of the gin stand that separates lint from seed — those are really small saws that pull the lint through

Cotton gin control panel

This is the bale press — the piece of equipment that compacts cotton lint into a bale for storage & transport for use in textiles

The gin’s mechanic was working on equipment and was nice enough to stop and visit for a few minutes. The coop has two gins that they alternated running this season. He keeps things in good mechanical order. Months later, I mentioned meeting him and found out that he has sent his kids to some of the most elite universities in the US based on his hard work in the cotton industry. Love that!

cotton bales ready for shipping

every bale of cotton in the US gets a permanent bale tag that stays with it from gin to fabric

Cottonseed, gin trash, etc are placed outside the gin until its sold by the truck load.

Related articles

• Eli Whitney would have been proud! – Eloy, AZ
• 2012 cotton crop remembered as record-breaking, heart-breaking
• The 12 Days of Cotton – My Christmas Homage to My Favorite Natural Fiber

The post Cotton Gin in Kansas Made Me Pump My Brakes appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

The cotton crop is nearing harvest and as you can see this field is no longer putting on flowers, the leaves are turning brown and maroon and beginning to drop and more bolls are opening. The field is in Hayti, Missouri.

Unlike the video I shared recently that showed blooms at the top of the plant, this field has stopped putting on new flowers and is focused on opening the remaining immature bolls. Another thing you can see has changed in the crop is the leaves are browning (kind of marooning really). This leads to defoliation and can happen naturally as frost hits or farmers can use crop protection products that encourage defoliation earlier than naturally would occur.

One reason this is important is if the mechanical picker were to go through the field with healthy green leaves, the plant would end up staining the fiber which would lead to a reduction in quality. After all, mills would need to bleach the fiber or something to get out the “grass stain” that would be on the lint before it even went to the gin. And the problem would just keep getting worse as the bales went to be spun into yarn or woven/kit into textiles.

Knowing this, cotton is graded based on color and the amount of foreign matter in the lint after its been ginned. Those grades are a key part of determining the price a farmer receives per pound.

The post Cotton 101 Video: Field Nearing Harvest & Importance of Defoliation appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.