From Organic Cotton Puffy Bolls to Yarns for Textiles

Organic Cotton is the fiber surrounding seeds in a cotton pod. Cotton is naturally white or off-white, but there are also natural green and brown varieties (sometimes called "colorgrown").   Cotton is heavy, dense and inelastic; although it will regain its shape after washing, its ability to do so decreases over time. It is comfortable to wear in a cool climate but not a hot one (the opposite of wool) and is slow to dry once wetted. It makes a weaker yarn than silk or linen but is stronger than wool.

Organic cotton is planted between February and June in warm tropical or sub-tropical areas. It takes about five months to grow a cotton-bearing plant from seed. After germination, flower buds emerge and open. The flowers' petals fall off, leaving the ovary on the plant to ripen and grow into a cotton "boll". These bolls open up, allowing the fibers inside to fluff up (these fibers help to distribute seeds using the wind just like dandelions).

Most cotton farms harvest using the latest equipment that pull and collect whole bolls off the cotton plants.  (Traditional hand harvesting is still done on some organic cotton farms and coops.)  After bolls are harvested they are "ginned" at a facility near the growing area. Ginning removes the seeds from the cotton fiber or "lint", as it is called. The lint is then baled and sent to a mill.

Once at the mill, the lumpy cotton lint is turned into a fuzzy cloud. This first step is called "carding", which pulls fibers in one direction (like combing your hair), forming a long, ropelike strand. The cotton rope is pulled and twisted into a thinner strand that is then fed into the combing machine that cleans and straightens the rope even more. After carding, lint becomes "roving".

Next, the roving is combed. Combing aligns the fibers; it separates out the longest and strongest from the weaker and shorter. These fall out from between the teeth of the comb and become "noil" - a material that makes ideal pillow, comforter, and mattress stuffing. The combed roving is now spun into yarn.

Throughout its 4,000 year history, cotton was always organic and pure!  The development of chemicals and pesticides in WWII that corporations subsequently developed for enormous profit opportunities, has dramatically changed the fiber that sustained hundreds of generations before us.