Textiles and Nonwovens Archives - Hundred Percent Cotton

Ric Dragon’s Handmade Cotton Shirt is also a Talisman

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:45:42 +0000

The other day on Twitter, I saw a friend I met through #BlogChat — Ric Dragon (@RicDragon on Twitter) say he was worried about not meeting a 2013 goal he had set for himself. It was a goal around writing a certain number of blog posts and guest posts. All I could think was it has been far too long since I had a guest perspective in my series of cotton posts! Love that he writes a post about a handmade cotton shirt and the power it brings.

I got to know Ric through #BlogChat and Twitter and finally met him when I went to the 140 conference in New York in 2012. I hope you enjoy this story on Ric’s favorite cotton shirt.

Threads

I’m not sure if she was insane, or simply eccentric. My friends who own the antique store didn’t seem alarmed at the lady holding up the camisole for inspection. Her accent was heavy – perhaps eastern European. And maybe the item of clothing was not strictly a camisole , but a light cotton shirt.

I could see from five feet away that the garment was ornately embroidered – and that it was all handwork. The lady said, “My mother made it for me forty years ago, but my own daughter is too large to wear it.” The antique dealer’s wife, the one that ran the bakery and coffee shop out of the back of the store looked interested.

The antique dealer shook his head. He offered thirty dollars. Without skipping a beat, the woman said, “fifty.” At this point, I’m thinking to myself that even at thirty, it was a bit of money for an old shirt. But then, all of that hand work.

They finally settled on forty dollars and a breakfast. I’ve had many a biscuit made in this shop, and I can tell you, the meal was worth it: also; all made by hand.

I can appreciate fine shirts as well as fine baked goods. At least the former can help me appear a bit thinner.

I own one bespoke shirt – a light blue cotton piece. I bought the right to the shirt at a charity auction for a hundred bucks, and then was told that I had “scored,” that the shirt was a bargain at five hundred dollars. After making an appointment, I had to travel to a brownstone building in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. I rang the bell, and was shown into a waiting area in a marble foyer, and then finally, to the penthouse fitting room.

I chose the fabric, the cut, the collar style, and even the cuff style. Later, after receiving the actual shirt, I showed it to a custom shirt maker down the street. “Absurd,” he declared. “That much hand work is just absurd. It could all be done with a machine much more quickly – much less expensively.”

When I have a special meeting, I wear the shirt as a sort of talisman meant to bring me all of the good luck of the universe. The good mojo of the universe is all drawn to the hand stitching; the gods and muses all must realize that such a shirt deserves their good favors.

How we’ve lost touch with our clothes. Even while ironing a shirt, my mind plays over the various parts, but most particularly on the shirt yoke – that bridge of cloth over the back shoulders of the shirt. I met a girl when I was a teenager who wouldn’t have anything to do with me. She was a good church-going girl, and she recited the line from Corinthians, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” Ironing the yoke of my shirt reminds me of that rejection each and every time.

The creation of clothes must have been an incredible task in the days before the industrial revolution. Combing cotton, the creation of thread and cloth, the tailoring of a shirt – how many hours went into any given piece of clothing? Handwork was unremarkable in a time when everything was done by hand. But how very valuable each and every piece of clothing must have been.

We live in a time where we are still privy to these little reminders – these bits of handmade clothing. We might hear a refrain from Summer Time – “the catfish are jumping, and the cotton is high,” and remember that cotton itself played a role in the American Civil War – that it was a key commodity in the world, and required great amounts of labor.

Today, when I went to the coffee shop, I noticed that the baker was wearing the shirt. This relic of a faraway trousseau was not only being worn, but appreciated – pointed out, felt between curious fingers. These cotton threads – not only between bits of cloth, but from another time and place.

If you have a personal story about cotton to share, you are welcome to write a guest perspective in my series of cotton posts too!

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What’s with that Hayden Panettiere cotton commercial?

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Mon, 06 May 2013 21:39:48 +0000

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.

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Cotton Gin in Kansas Made Me Pump My Brakes

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:02:04 +0000

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.

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

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Cotton 101 Video: Impacts of Rain on Cotton During Harvest

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:11:16 +0000

There has been so much rain in the Mid-South recently and I thought some of you may be wondering how rain may impact the cotton crop that is still in the field. So I’m posting another harvest time video. The previous two videos showed 1) what the cotton plant looks like as it nears harvest and 2) a field that was being defoliated and talked about why. This video shows cotton that is fully defoliated and would be ready for cotton pickers if it wasn’t for the rain.

When you think about how beautiful a cotton crop is at harvest, you picture big, white, fluffy bolls of cotton. Well when rain hits, it can change all of that depending on the weather. The two biggest impacts are reductions in lint yield and decreased fiber quality.

Cotton Yield Impacts of Rain

The cotton plant is built to hold lots of cotton bolls of varying sizes with bigger bolls closer to the stalk and the bottom of the plant. As rain falls, it soaks right into the lint making it heavier. That can give the plant a hand time holding onto the link so it starts to stringout (just realized that word wasn’t in my working cotton dictionary). If the rain is particularly hard or if its also windy, the link can actually fallout of the bracts / boll and land on the ground. That definitely takes its toll on yield.

The photo at right shows the quick impact that even a light rain can have. There are still some bolls that are holding together well, but some of the others are stringing out pretty badly.

Cotton Quality Impacts of Rain

Cotton lint is one of the valuable crops that what you want to harvest is exposed to the elements — same goes for a lot of fruits and vegetables. Since the lint is exposed to the weather and all, it can be plagued by things that will deteriorate the quality that’s there.

The most common one happens when moisture soaks into the lint. If the weather is not really warm to dry it out quickly, that water will create an environment for molds, mildew, etc to form on the boll, much like will happen if you leave a wet t-shirt balled up on the floor. That leads to spotting, discoloration, etc. and textile mills don’t want to deal with those problems when they are spinning yarns or weaving and knitting fabrics.
One that can happen but is more rare, is the seed can begin to sprout in the boll. The seed is all tied into the lint, so any growth of the seed, leaves plant matter to provide contamination as harvest goes to the gin.

Harvest Problems on Video

The video shows a bit more and now and then, you can actually hear the rain that was falling on me! There is also another video from a couple of years ago when I got to the field with our of the awesome agronomists I work with — Dave Albers and he shows hardlock bolls, quality issues and more.

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Cotton 101 Video: Field Nearing Harvest & Importance of Defoliation

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:38:15 +0000

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.

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Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 12:44:25 +0000

Last weekend as I drove through the Missouri Bootheel, I saw cotton fields at various stages of development. In fact, I found one field that had a lot of bolls on it and was still blooming too, so it gave me a chance to show a lot of the different stages of growth for cotton.

I hope some of you enjoy looking at the video, it sort of brings one of my top cotton 101 posts What does a cotton plant look like? into a state of motion.

Key Parts of the Cotton Plant

Cotton plants really are beautiful! There are pretty flowers and cotton bolls are absolutely awesome. Lots of people haven’t had the chance to take those plants in first-hand. So this video and post is a way to share that beauty with those of you who may not have plants within reach! So what should you look at on the cotton plant?

White flower / white bloom — The first day a bloom opens it is white or a creamy yellow color. In the afternoon, the pollen is released and as it self-pollinates.
Pink flower / pink bloom — Once pollinated, the flower begins to turn pink, becoming a bright fuschia in a few days.
Young boll — As the pink bloom dries down, the young boll pushes its way up, forcing the pink bloom to fall off as a tag. The boll continues to grow as the fiber and seed grow.
Cracked boll — As cotton fiber matures, cotton bolls open slowly as the bracts dry and separate.
Open boll — This is the part of the plant that most people think of when they think of a cotton plant… it’s what we harvest. And it looks like the cotton balls in our bathroom cabinets.

Learn More about Cotton

There are lots of great sources of information on my favorite crop!

I post things pretty often on cotton, you can see them through the overview of them on my Cotton 101 page or check out both the cotton category and cotton guest category on the blog. Some of my highest rated posts on cotton show what cotton plants look like, Things Farmers Think Through in Selecting Cotton Varieties, How Harvest has Changed in a Lifetime and A Working Cotton Dictionary (Words Cotton Folks Use that May Confuse Others)
TheFabricOfOurLives website is a pretty great resource on the fashion side of cotton!
A great resource for great technical information is Cotton Physiology Today, a series of newsletters by the Cotton Foundation about cotton plants and the management of them. The University of Georgia’s Cotton Growth & Development brochure is another great resource too.

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Cotton is the Fabric of the Classroom for @HouseAgBuilt

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:07:57 +0000

It has been a little while since I’ve had a guest post in the series of people telling about how cotton is the fabric of their lives. This one has been in the works for a little while though and it is worth the wait. It’s from California elementary school teacher Sarah who blogs at The House That Ag Built. She has both Twitter (@houseagbuilt) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/houseagbuilt) accounts as well. Thanks Sarah for sharing your story & the story of your students!

Why I Love Cotton in the Classroom

Guest post by Sarah from The House That Ag Built for Janice the great J

As an elementary school teacher, I know the importance of teaching agriculture. Society is so far removed from agriculture that many kids and adults alike think that food is made in the store and not grown in the field. That is sad. This past school year, I made the decision to step up my agriculture education a notch (or two) and boy am I happy with the results! There are now 24 kids in my area that know more about agriculture than their parents and most adults in our area.

My first graders did a four-week agriculture unit and our focus was cotton. We learned the structure of a cotton plant, what a cotton plant needs to grow, where cotton grows in the US, what we use cotton for, and we even got to see cotton that was straight from a farmer’s field! Cotton is the perfect commodity to teach – even to such young learners! Cotton is everywhere, it literally surrounds us in the form of clothing, we use it every day in the form of money, and it is found all around our homes in the form of towels, and sheets.

It is easy for kids to make a connection with something that is all around them, both at home and at school. I LOVE cotton in the classroom! Having my students come up to me as proud as can be declaring that they are wearing cotton was so much fun! It really brought agriculture to life for my kids.

I could go on and on about all my proud moments with cotton in my classroom, but I will let my students work show just how much they retained 7 months later. I told them to write why cotton is important and here is what they did:

“I love cotton because I have my best coat and it is made out of cotton. I almost wear it every day because it is my best shirt (coat) ever in my life and I have a lot of blankets at home and cotton is important too.”

“I like cotton because it makes pillows and I play pillow fight, and (cotton) gives me socks I love to wear. And one more thing they (cotton) make me my favorite shoes.” My 6-year-old student made the connection from cotton to pillows to having a pillow fight; cotton = fun! They are so adorable!

“I love cotton because the cows eat cotton seeds and then they give milk and the milk goes to the dairy and the dairy makes ice cream! I love cotton! And I love cotton because my favorite shirt is made of cotton; my shirt is warm too. I love cotton very very very much! Thank you!” My favorite connection! It is pretty cool that they can explain how cotton and ice cream relate!

“The important (thing about cotton) is that cotton gives us pillows and I love to sleep when I am so tired and cotton is so fuzzy and cotton makes money and I love to do a pillow fight and my blanket it is so fuzzy and it is blue and even plants of cotton. I love cotton. Cotton is so important for us. I love cotton so much if we didn’t have cotton we wouldn’t have clothes and pillow fights! I love cotton so so so much.” This writing is all over the place but when she was reading it to me after, she was so excited that she knew so much about cotton products! She even remembered that money is made out of cotton.

A few of the picture my students drew on the back of their papers:

Cotton makes dollars (aka money).

Cotton makes sheets and clothes.

They even remembered how to draw a cotton plant and the boll.

As you can see cotton is lots of fun to teach in an elementary classroom. My students and I love cotton in the classroom because it is easy to relate to and creates lasting agricultural literacy.

Thank you for having me Janice!

I love it! And think its awesome how much the kids remembered from one time of year to another!

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Wanted: Job that Pays Well for Napping / Cocooning in Comfort

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:33:44 +0000

It been a couple of years since a college kid seemed to stumble into my social media world. Okay, other college kids stumble in, but this one — Kelly Rivard took up residency! I got to know Kelly through Twitter (@kmrivard) and before long she was appearing all around me! Facebook, Skype, the now nearly forgotten Google Buzz and blogging (you really should check out https://kellymrivard.com). Its been great watching her grow as a person, as a communicator and as a member of a dynamic social media community I love being part of.

When I put out the request for guest posts about cotton, Kelly let me know early she was trying to decide which direction she wanted to go with it. She had a few ideas she was mulling around and she wanted to settle in on just the right one. Well, she hit this one out of the park if you ask me! She’s found a way of showing who she is and how cotton is the fabric of her life in a way that nobody else could do. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I’m at a stage in my life where I am almost constantly on the go. I juggle different jobs and career-building gigs, a heavy class load, homework, and all the mental strain of wondering where life will take me. There’s of course the demands and desire for a fairly functional social life, too, and volunteer projects, and family obligations. College is exhausting. I think I figured out that at one point in time in my senior year, I was regularly putting in a 70-hour “work week” with jobs, homework, and class. Needless to say, sleep is rare.

I have these “happy places” that allow me to escape from the stresses of college life. They allow me to shut off the world and just “be.” One such place is the creek on my parents’ property. Another is the westward facing deck on my childhood home, where I can watch storms roll in and the sun sink down. My most consistent de-stressing location?

My bed.

I’m a college kid. Let’s be serious here: if I could get paid to nap, it would be my full-time job. If I could take all my classes from here, you betcha I would. As much as I love to get gussied up and impress the world, sometimes sweatpants and a flannel hand-sewn quilt from my grandma just sounds “right.”

I’m picky about my sheets. I like the “t-shirt sheets.” You know, the ones that are pre-softened and a little thicker than normal cotton sheets? It’s like wearing your favorite worn-in t-shirt from that concert you went to years ago, every time you crawl into bed. And my quilt here at school? It’s one of those hand-sawn grandma quilts. You know the type…you can use them forever and ever, even when there’s a split seam or two. They just seem to get warmer and more fluffy with age. I’ve got two of them here at school with me, one made of a lighter cotton and one made of the softest most cuddliest flannel on the face of the earth.

Yeah, you’re jealous.

(Sidenote: my sister is notorious for stealing other people’s grandma quilts. My grandma made about 20 of them in one year and give a quilt to everyone in our family for Christmas. Grandma quilts abound, and if you can’t find one it’s normally because my sister has stolen it.)

Cotton really is the fabric of my life. It’s my safe little warm cocoon of happiness here at school. My cotton grandma quilts are always here to offer a warm hug of comfort and support, even when my family is a hundred (or more) miles away. And, my relationship with cotton goes much further than this. I’m a jeans-and-t-shirt kinda gal, so in a way these cotton articles are a part of my identity. Some of my favorite keepsakes from my late father are the paisley cotton hankies that he always had poking out of one (or more) pockets. (He didn’t always remember if he had one or not, so he’d accrue them in different pockets over a working day as he happened across them.)

On that note, I should probably shake myself out of my “cocoon” and face the day. Sorry, cotton comfiness, until laying in bed is a high-paying professional sport, I need to find other ways to pay the bills!

You can read more stories of people sharing how cotton is the fabric of their life or read about how cotton is produced by checking out some of the other things on the blog.

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What’s the Fabric of our Lives About? Why Advertise Cotton?

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure about you, but I often find myself humming or singing along as someone on TV sings “the touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.” But have you ever stopped to wonder why there are ads for cotton on TV?

Well, its easy enough of an answer. 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 (as you probably guessed, the Zooey Deschanel part of the campaign cause I love her voice and sense of style too).

What a lot of people don’t realize is that cotton farmers pay for those ads as do people who import cotton. It’s a way for these groups to pool funds to support market awareness. It’s fairly easy to understand that farmers would like to keep cotton top of mind and since the makers of all the synthetic fibers like polyester have ad budgets, advertising is part of it. I can certainly remember various fibers — rayon, tencel, etc suggesting they have benefits over natural fiber.

Another part of the financial resources goes to 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. Those activities help provide a return to the people funding the program. It is pretty ingenious and I have to say, for me, the ads provide a look at natural fibers as fashionable and comfortable.

And knowing how much goes into the seal of cotton (all that research in endorsed by farmers), I always feel buying a product that has the familiar cotton logo on it!

If that’s not all reason enough to check into the things cotton farmers are funding, I’ll be a name dropper. Long-time friend in the cotton industry, Louisiana cotton farmer Jay Hardwick currently is serving as the chairman of Cotton Inc. And Jay totally rocks! If you don’t know that, you must have missed the spot America’s Heartland did on Jay Hardwick last year — you really should get caught up on that.

Information for people who enjoy cotton clothes and textiles is available from:

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.

Farmers, importers, etc who want information on the programs of Cotton Inc can check out:

The organization’s activities on a broader basis cottoninc.com — you should also check out the sustainability site at CottonToday
You can like Cotton Inc on Facebook for info.
Tweets from @CottonInc

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What’s this talk about natural fibers?

Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:25:29 +0000

I love it when a short conversation inspires a blog post! I want to give a few thoughts to the ideas that my good friend Marie Bowers inspired recently with this tweet:

@JPlovesCOTTON Hey what is the demand for cotton?

— Marie Bowers (@MarieB41) January 31, 2012

My first reaction probably wasn’t what she was looking for, but it made me laugh.

I WANT COTTON RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!! RT @MarieB41: @JPlovesCOTTON Hey what is the demand for cotton?

— Janice Person (@JPlovesCOTTON) January 31, 2012

Once the laughter subsided though, I wanted to figure out where she was coming from & what she was really asking about so I asked….

· Maybe you meant something else? Like growing middle class in much of the world, growing population too?

It wasn’t long until I realized, she was asking about cotton because a lot of people in her part of the country have been talking about another fiber crop – flax. But Marie had only heard pieces and was willing to trust me to try and fill her in. When I mentioned linen clothing, it seemed she didn’t realize that linen came from flax. My guess is she is not the only one!

So what are the natural fiber crops and what makes them similar or different?

These are the points I have learned to date and I have to remind you, that i have only a tiny bit more experience than Marie and am in no way an expert.

What helps define the group of natural fibers? My layperson’s explanation is pretty easy. Natural fibers are harvested from plants or animals to be used in various products we use. You are probably like the vast majority of the world in not thinking much about where fibers come from, natural or man-made but natural fibers are usually from a farm.

The most common natural fibers in my part of the world are cotton, linen, wool, cashmere and silk. And I think we’d consider wood a fiber as we harvest trees, but I am not too sure there.

The first two are from plants (cotton and flax) and the others are from the animal kingdom (assuming silkworms can be classified animals). Some of the fiber crops that you may not hear as much about are mohair, hemp, kenaf, jute, bamboo and I’m sure I’m missing some!

Most of us know natural fibers is through clothing and household linens, and paper. But they are also used for things like rope, in medical supplies, and lots of other uses too. I’m going to stick to natural fibers used in clothing.

So a few bullet points from my background with cotton & textiles?

Its clear, I have a favorite fiber. But there are some points that I’ll mention:

Each fiber has strengths and weaknesses (well other than cotton that totally rocks )
It seems that as more parts of the world begin to build a larger middle class, people tend to buy another outfit or two. Think about how our grandparents may not have even had closets and now we have homes with closets that are enormous. Or think of how many hoodies/jackets/sweaters you have versus how many sweaters/jackets were in your parents home, or compare jeans, etc.
Demand for cotton has been fairly consistent and global supply tends to keep up with demand. This is fairly easy as there are so many world areas involved in cotton production and consumption. There is more flexibility to plant more cotton in a given year than there is to harvest wool…. you just need to have seed & available land vs the livestock to do that production.
Farmers will plant cotton in warmer geographies but they may change the number of acres in cotton vs other crops.
Fiber consumption involves on-farm production as well as textile mill use.
Textile mills tend to gain experience working with certain fibers and the equipment they use may be better for one group of fibers or another.

My selections for natural fibers?

Cotton is a fiber that has great flexibility. I have a great love for wearing a pair of jeans and a hoodie (picking from a bunch) on a day when I’m goofing off, but have several tailored blazers and slacks made of majority cotton that make it a frequent fiber for the office too. In winter, I have thick cotton flannel sheets that are awesome! Its not just the crop I love but I do love cotton products!
I like wool but it wasn’t until I found SmartWool that I realized what an incredible fiber it was! I can’t imagine a winter without my comfy wool socks! I’ve become a great proponent for wool too, buying my mom & nieces SmartWool that seems to have changed their lives! And boiled wool cardigans totally rock this time of year! My brother has been shearing his sheep for a few years and my sister had some of it spun for a blanket for his first grandbaby. And the trip to England resulted in some hand-dyed wool yarn & a wool scarf!
Linen has varied a lot in my life… at one time all linen clothes would be wrinkled for me by the time I got the clothes on. But there are softer linens now and in the summer months, I wear some linen slacks and jackets. I’ve never been to a farm where they were growing flax that I know of. Since its a bit more to the north, I’ll have to put that on my to do list!
Silk is a great summer fiber too but I’ll admit to wearing it a good bit of the year. I’ve got several nice blouses made of silk that make it easy to run around while wearing a suit but I also have some casual silk shirts. In early winter, or in this mild one, I sometimes wear silks (as in long underwear)!

Which natural fibers do you prefer and why?

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