Home Grown Fiber: Ivory Spinners Cotton

More than a few years ago, when we lived in North Carolina I grew some cotton and spent the polar vortex winter spinning it on a drop spindle. Until this year, that was my only experience ever growing or spinning cotton, or spinning any fiber for that matter.

I decided last spring that I wanted to give cotton a try again.

We are in Zone 7a now so its a bit of a stretch but I decided to try growing Ivory Spinners Cotton, an heirloom variety available through Southern Exposure. I read that if you are in zone 7 where the season may be too short, you can start the cotton indoors and transplant it out. For me, this was a total failure. The cotton has a sensitive tap root which appears to not appreciate being transplanted. I wound up having to re-order seeds and start over direct seeding when all of my transplanted seeds died. Despite my early season challenges I wound up with a 50ft row of very productive cotton plants.

Even with happy well producing plants, the season is still short here for cotton and bolls were just starting to mature and open up by the time the frosty mornings started. I wasn’t sure how things would go after that point but as it turns out the bolls will continue to mature even after the plants completely die. I don’t know enough about cotton to say if the bolls that are opening up, even now, in January are of a lower quality fiber but I suspect that may be the case.

When I last grew cotton and spun it on a drop spindle I truly had no idea what I was doing. I did not even card it. Just spun it right off the seed.

I did some more research this time and watched a few more videos. I have still been removing the seeds by hand but Joe and I have been trialing some DIY cotton gin set-ups, so stay tuned on that front.

After picking out seeds for the last 2 months I have a few bags of clean cotton fiber and I have started to attempt carding and spinning. It going, OKAY.

I do not have a particular goal in mind with this exploration other than building a deeper relationship with and understanding of this plant and fiber.

Although…someone did recently tell me about how their grandmother in North Carolina would hand card cotton to make batts for her quilts…so well see what happens.