Gotta love how really soft t-shirts can make it easy to represent your interests in total comfort! Recently, I wanted to buy a couple of new shirts specifically to show my pride in living in St. Louis to wear as I went to SXSW (some tips I wrote for SXSW attendees).

I did a lot of searches for local companies and found some great designs and immediately went to see what styles of shirts they could put it on. There were shirts that proclaimed a love of St. Louis foods (so many great ones!) and our pride in diversity.

As I looked through the details though, it looked like all the shirts were a cotton-polyester blend. This has become more common than I want to acknowledge since I am a huge fan of the breathability of cotton and prefer natural fibers.

It was the same on some other big websites recently.

Somewhere along the line, marketing and positioning of certain blends have been taken to be the softest t-shirts. I get that in the store on day one it may feel softer than some cotton t-shirts but I take the broader look.

Quality cotton t-shirts only get softer and comfier as they get worn whereas blends can tend to pilling showing the wear. And ring-spun cotton has such an amazing feel just because of the type of machine that makes the fabric!

I decided to reach out to the small business knowing they print shirts to order. They said they would check the possibilities. I never got options from that company, but I did find some soft t-shirts sharing my love of cotton & St. Louis that I am going to enjoy for the long term.

And I will keep asking for 100 percent cotton options… and sharing the love of soft t-shirts old and new!

The post In Search of Really Soft T-Shirts appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Years ago I laughed as my niece was picking cotton and dreamed of her mom making her some socks or something with the fiber. Well, if that niece was on the How to Make Everything team, she may have figured out a way to make it happen AND get video throughout the process.

Watching this video made me laugh a bit cause there were some things I knew really should have been thought about in advance (reminder cotton doesn’t like too much rain). But mostly the video made me think about how much goes into the stuff we have. It takes a lot to make a t-shirt! 

The Premise: Hard to Know What it Takes to Produce Common Items

If you aren’t familiar with How to Make Everything you may want to check out a few of their videos. They break down something as simple as a new t-shirt but walk you through all the complex pieces of work it takes to happen. This episode is especially useful for people who purchase those cheap $5 t-shirts but may not think much about what it takes to make t-shirts and the true cost of cheap clothing. As someone who advocates for a better t-shirt rather than simply more in my wardrobe (confession I still have too many), and someone who has seen the various processes at a bigger scale, I am beyond impressed someone would be so committed to the idea that they spent three years working on the project! 

It’s collapsed down to a really good 20 minutes if you want to see what it would take to produce a cotton t-shirt…. all the way from growing to sewing and wearing.

It’s Hard Growing Cotton

I love how honest he is on why it took so long to get this project done. Trying to grow cotton in a garden is hard but growing it in Minnesota…. that’s a few extra levels of hard. I lived in New York years ago and grew a cotton plant in my office. Although we all enjoy how much longer the days are in summer when we live in northern areas, reality is the number of days where that sunlight is paired with the temperatures cotton thrives in is not enough.

The things I saw that I thought hmmm…. I started seeds similarly to the way he did, small tray or pot, and I moved it to a five gallon bucket under heat lights later trying to give the tap root a good shot. Having some sand mixed into that potting soil could have helped too since cotton doesn’t like a lot of water on it (farmers say cotton doesn’t like wet feet). Seeing him try to scoop up cotton plants out of deep water…. all I could think was bless his heart. Cotton farmers know the pain though they may have looked for a different patch of ground and planted soybeans there.

The Knitting Process vs Weaving

Did you get the part where they actually built looms? I haven’t thought much about the world without knit fabrics…. I mean t-shirts, yoga pants, etc are so awesome in their stretch because the way the machinery works… so even though it is 100% cotton, it has that nice physique hugging quality.

Seeing them weave fabric and him make himself fit? Priceless!

Options to See Dirt to Shirt

There are some farmers who work with specific suppliers in the U.S. who are trying to help the textile industry here rebound. Ronnie Burleson is a farmer in North Carolina I met years ago when friends and I toured his farm (Brian of The Farmer’s Life wrote a post about his first cotton farm visit). Ronnie grows and his cotton is spun, dyed, knitted all nearby in the Cotton of the Carolinas products. They call it going dirt to shirt, a spin on farm to plate that fits. I’m guessing those shirts would be a perfect fit with the North Carolina Wrangler jeans.

The post What would it take to make your own t-shirt? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have “liked” lot of brand pages on Facebook and have to admit, some of them eventually get unliked or hidden cause they just don’t seem to get the kinds of things I’d be interested to see from a brand. But some friends saw the Lee Jeans page this week and knew they had to call it to my attention. Jodi Oleen was the first to shout at me! And they were right! I was pumped! Look at the photo Lee Jeans shared!

So…. how many pairs of Lee Jeans can you make from one bale of cotton? Well, I’ll give you a hint that Lee didn’t give fans of its page. A bale of cotton weighs just under 500 pounds. With that hint I hope you don’t low ball it too badly. Some of the guesses on the Lee page were obviously not made with that factoid in mind cause I saw one or two guesses that assumed bales were the size of one on my bookshelf!

More than 1,200 people guessed – some of whom definitely did a little internet research. I have to wonder if some of them found an old post of mine where I gave a chart of how many of this or that you could make from a bale. For jeans, you can make 215 pairs! Here are some of the other quantities of various cotton items you can get from a bale of cotton, according to the National Cotton Council, one bale of cotton can make:

• 215 Pairs of Jeans
• 249 Bed Sheets
• 409 Men’s Sport Shirts
• 690 Terry Bath Towels
• 765 Men’s Dress Shirts
• 1,217 Men’s T-Shirts
• 1,256 Pillowcases
• 2,104 Boxer Shorts
• 2,419 Men’s Briefs
• 3,085 Diapers
• 4,321 Mid-Calf Socks
• 6,436 Women’s Knit Briefs
• 21,960 Women’s Handkerchiefs
• 313,600 $100 Bills

If I get to pick, I think I’ll take that last one! Yes, I will take the more than 300k $100 bills!

Another thing to note, bales used to be wrapped in that nice burlap. it helped keep cotton clean and was pretty cheap, well now, bales are wrapped in plastic bags. It keeps them clean, doesn’t run the risk of sticking to the lint (you wouldn’t want burlap fiber making it into your 500 count sheets!)

The post How many pairs of jeans in a bale of cotton?, Lee Jeans Asks appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Going local has been the buzz in food for a while. And as someone who loves going out to nearby farms and picking my own fruit or to spend a Saturday morning at the farmer’s market, I find myself buying more local food too. But with clothing? Its a lot different than the food discussion. People are wanting less processed foods, they want it in the state it comes off the plant & they’d like to eat it ASAP (which is CRITICAL with some foods like sweet corn if you ask me), but cotton isn’t in a ready to consume state (unless you want to hand gin it, do all the combing, spinning, dyeing, weaving, etc and I’ve met a few people who do that to come up with incredible textiles but the time that takes & the costs if not for yourself is truly amazing).

The US textile business used to have us a fairly local business with small textile mills in many, perhaps even most of the states where cotton is grown. But in the past 15 years, international competition (particularly from China) and consumers desire to buy nearly disposably cheap clothes has put most of the US textile industry out of business or at least encouraged them to relocate to areas of the world where they could produce on an economic scale that makes them competitive at the cash register.

But there are a few people in the Cotton Belt who are looking to change how we look at clothes and a recent article from CNN tells us about a concept under development in North Carolina. And the return of acres to cotton from grain may just provide additional fiber that can be used locally. An excerpt of the article follows:

One company hoping to take advantage of this abundance of cotton is TS Designs, a small T-shirt printing company in Burlington. In manufacturing quality T-shirts within the state, TS Designs aims to preserve environmental resources and restore part of the crippled North Carolina textile industry in the process.

Regional farmers and manufacturers have banded together to form Cotton of the Carolinas, a collaboration aimed at promoting the use of locally grown cotton.

“The genesis of Cotton of the Carolinas was this idea that the growing of cotton here in the United States and then exporting that to far-ranging regions of the world, in the long run, just didn’t make sense,” says Sam Moore, an adviser to TS Designs.

Moore, along with friend and TS Designs President Eric Henry, made the decision to manufacture T-shirts from cotton grown, ginned, spun, knit, finished, cut, sewn, printed and dyed all within the state’s borders.

“The transportation distance of a conventional T-shirt that you buy in a big box store can vary drastically. If China is involved, then you’re talking, as the crow flies, at least 17,000 miles,” says Eric Michel, the company’s vice president of operations.

“Our shirts go from dirt to shirt in less than 700 miles. That’s actually including roads and not as the bird flies.”

TS Designs has three main objectives for Cotton of the Carolinas: to reduce the transportation footprint, to support jobs in North Carolina and to have a transparent supply chain. “We can build an entire supply chain here in North Carolina,” Michel says.

TS Design’s first step in achieving these goals was to call Ronnie Burleson. (HundredPercentCotton note — photo above is from a subsequent visit to Ronnie’s farm.)

“They wanted to convince us that this was a good thing and (that we should) be a part of it. I said, ‘Sure,’ ” Burleson recalls. “If I can support my neighbor and they can support me, then I think that’s a good thing for all of us.”

via Locally grown clothes go from ‘dirt to shirt’ – CNN.com.

Would you be willing to look at the tags & consider something you knew came from dirt to shirt right here in the US or even better, from a group of farmers right down the road? What if they cost more?

The post A New Way to Think about Going Local — Dirt to Shirt appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Its getting close to reality and closer to a store near you. What am I talking about? Cotton clothing from UnderArmour, the brand that was not showing much love to my beloved natural fiber before. (A past blog post does more background.) But they are officially launching the Charged Cotton line and it will be shipping soon for March sales.

Wired magazine says the about face was led by the reality that their target customers (people in their late teens through 30s) have an average of seven cotton T-shirts for each synthetic shirt in their wardrobe. Yep, it’s the best way to grow the brand to use cotton fiber and then put a bit of UA spin to it by combining the vast majority of cotton with five percent elastane, which is the fiber that provides a stretch fabric. The result is comfort, wicking & dryability.

The production process starts with alternating yarns of hydrophobic and hydrophilic cotton. The hydrophilic part is responsible for cotton’s moisture absorption, which can extend to 25 times its weight in water. But the inclusion of a hydrophobic yarn, which contains molecules that reject water, helps athletes stay as dry as when they first put on the garment. “That’s what causes the sweat to wick away from the cotton and dry quicker,” Stafford said of the hydrophobic yarns.

Heather Mitts, a defender with the Atlanta Beat of the Women’s Professional Soccer league, explained to Wired.com that the cotton products she used to wear while training were too heavy. Not so with Charged Cotton: “You don’t really notice that you’re wearing cotton.”

via How Under Armour Learned to Love Cotton Fiber| Playbook.

I’m going to have to check the line out next time I’m at Sports Authority or Dick’s Sporting Goods. Wonder what the sales people will think when I mention how I have a bunch of cotton farmer friends…. and imagine the glaze over when I ask about the hydrophobic and hydrophillic yarns. I think I’m going to like this!

The post Under Armour Charged Cotton Coming Soon appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

One of the great things about the awesome network of online friends I have is that occasionally, out of nowhere, I get a photo tweeted or Facebooked to me just because it makes them think about me and/or agriculture. I realize I’ve lost track of the bulk of these photos that clearly show the presence of  agriculture in our daily lives. I got the idea as I was walking through the mall today and saw a shirt that was somewhat like the one below that Amanda Sollman saw in Las Vegas this week (you can read about why she was there in this post on her blog). Amanda’s tweet was simple & to the point:

https://twitter.com/#!/sollmana/status/10151453385564160

Thanks Amanda for sharing the cotton message someone from Clemson University’s school of agriculture was wearing in Vegas! I hope to have more cotton & agriculture love from friends to share on my blog in the future as well. When posting to Twitter, I’ll use the #friendsphoto hashtag too… I’m thinking others who blog about rather specific areas may want to do this. Not only is it another way to amplify your message, but it’s fantastic to think about having a series of photos from various friends stacking up digitally!

The post Starting a New Series — Friend’s Photo — First One is from Amanda Sollman appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Following is a guest post by my niece Alicia who’s currently working on her masters in education at the University of Memphis (she’s the fourth generation of women in my family to go there!).  I’ve been lucky enough to have her living with me — we both seem to be enjoying it! I so appreciate her willingness to share what she learned her first time out on a working farm on this scale.

First I want to say that writing this blog is a little out of my comfort zone, but it was a lot of fun being in the field and I figured I would share what I learned for the rest of the people out there who know little about cotton farming, as I do.

With that disclaimer, let me start my blog post.

I recently had my first experience on a real farm that wasn’t there for tourists.  Janice has worked in cotton since before I can remember and I have always been told how important it and other natural fibers are to our lives.  I went with her to a friend’s farm to see how cotton was picked.  Being from a small town in the South, I am used to fields of crops and farm equipment, however, cotton is not grown near my hometown in North Carolina.  It was quite different from what I am used to seeing.  This was the first time I’ve been in a cotton field and been able to look at the bolls up close.

Being in the field of cotton brought up some thoughts about how things are made.  I wear cotton almost everyday, but rarely think about how it comes from a plant.  It’s strange to think that a seed is what started the beginning of my favorite t-shirt but I digress.

We got up Saturday and got a late breakfast on the long (for Memphis) drive out to the farm.  When we got there, there were two pickers in the field along with a boll buggy, module maker, and a shredder.  Before that day I would not have been able to tell you what any of these looked like much less how they worked.  I’m not saying I’m an expert on them now, but I do understand the basics. 

The pickers were two different models, one that built modules on board and one that doesn’t, hence the need for the boll buggy and module maker.  We spent a long time watching the machines work in the field, while trying to stay out of their way.  My favorite time was when the two pickers were facing each other and it seemed like they were dueling, of course they weren’t they were figuring out the rest of the field since they were now working in the same area.  Janice’s friend Bob wasn’t in the field when we got there, but showed up a little later with lunch for the all the guys who were working.

After the guys filled up on fried chicken I got in the picker that makes its own modules with Tim (there is actually a “buddy” seat for riders).  This was by far the biggest vehicle/machine I had ever been on besides a plane.  Tim and I headed through the fields of already picked and cut cotton to cross the street and head to a new field.  It was quite bumpy riding in the picker. 

As we were crossing the fields I was noticing the different computers and technology inside.  This was something that I had never really thought about when seeing tractors and other machines in fields.  There were many conveniences inside along with the high tech gear.  One screen shows the exact location of the field as well as other information to keep track of the cotton.  There is one to show the images off the three different cameras on the machine and another to show how full the module is.

When we started picking in the other field, I learned about some of the differences between the two types of pickers. Who would have thought that the turning radius would be so different on two such similar machines, not me?  I know this because when there was just our picker in the field we weren’t skipping any rows in between like before lunch when there were two in the same field.  I was in the picker for about an hour and picked one module full of cotton, well Tim picked it, I just watched.  However, it didn’t seem like that much time had passed as it was fascinating to watch the cotton get pulled in by the six pickers on the front right below my feet.  It was also interesting because the plants themselves are left standing after going through hundreds of steel teeth.

After just a few hours on a farm I learned a lot about how things work.  Many things that are used everyday by me and my friends start in a field, which is strange to think about.  I have a greater appreciation to those that work out in the field everyday in order for people like me to have nice things than I had before.  I learned a bunch of stuff on the farm, and know that there will be more lessons coming to me from an ag standpoint while living with Janice.

If you have a chance to experience something like this I strongly encourage you to do so.  I had a lot of fun and have a great story to share with my future students.

As I mentioned in my blog post Friday, we are starting a series of Cotton 101 posts and I got energized to create a logo to provide a link to all of them as they come out.

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