Search Results for: cotton

Inner Pillow Case

GOTS Organic Cotton Pillow Liner Full

This lightweight inner pillow case made of a smooth sateen cotton is designed to hold your loose fill, such as shredded latex, woolly bolas, kapok, millet hulls, or wool batting. This is the same inner case as included in all our pillow kits that use two cases.

One of the short sides has a full zipper, so you can easily add and remove your loose fill to adjust your pillow’s height and firmness. To eliminate the chance of the zipper coming open on its own and to silence the jingle of the zipper pull, we have hidden the pull inside a pocket to keep it secure.

Travel: 12″ x 20″
Standard: 20″ x 26″
Queen: 20″ x 30″
King: 20″ x 36″
Body: 20″ x 60″
Custom: You name the size, we’ll sew it.

Kapok Fiber (per lb.)

Kapok Fiber
  • Soft and Medium Firm
  • Washable
  • Buoyant
  • Lofty
  • Mold & Mildew Resistant

Kapok fiber is the seed pod fluff of a rain forest tree called the Ceiba tree or the silk cotton tree. The pods are harvested in the East and the trees are left standing. The fluff is actually buoyant; it was used in the designs for the first life jackets, that is, until synthetic foams came on the market. Its feel is similar to the light weight feeling of down, but without the allergies and the loss of loft that go with feathers. The silk is luxurious to the touch and a medium firm support.

Pillows stuffed with kapok act most like standard pillows. They have loft, can be fluffed, do not need to be punched in the middle of the night and retain their shape well. Kapok makes a great decorative pillow as overstuffing a pillow case with it highlights the pillow’s shape and fabric well.

To stuff a pillow, the following weights will give you plenty of fill.  The more fill, the firmer the pillow is.  To fluff, see the Care Tab.

  • Travel/Child Size: 1 lb Kapok Fiber
  • Standard Size: 3 lb Kapok Fiber
  • Queen Size: 3.7 lb Kapok Fiber
  • King Size: 4.5 lb Kapok Fiber

To determine the amount of fill needed for your custom sized project, visit our Custom Calculator.  Select the shape of your pillow and the loose fill of your choose. Fill can be purchased here or at the top of the calculator’s page.

Outer Pillow Case

GOTS Organic Cotton Pillow Outer

This organic pillow case of our thick double knit provides a smooth finish to your pillow. Despite its appearance of texture, this fabric is smooth and soft enough that many choose to sleep on it instead of their own pillow cases.

Inside this thick fabric is probably a liner stuffed with your choice of loose fill, such as shredded latex, woolly bolas, kapok, millet hulls, or wool batting. This is the same outer organic pillow case as included in all our pillow kits that use two cases.

The zipper along one full short side lets you remove this pillow case to wash it if desired. To eliminate the chance of the zipper coming open on its own and to silence the jingle of the zipper pull, we have hidden the pull inside a pocket to keep it secure.

Travel: 12″ x 20″
Standard: 20″ x 26″
Queen: 20″ x 30″
King: 20″ x 36″
Body: 18″ x 54″
Custom: You name the size, we’ll sew it.

Wool Batting Wrap

Farm Wool
  • Lofty and Fluffy
  • US wool
  • Clean of chemicals and vegetation
  • 1/2″ thick sheet
  • Sold by the 88″ yard or the mattress wrap size

Wool batting is lofty and fluffy, perfect for your DIY bedding projects. It is soft wool in a long sheet. Because of wool’s hollow fiber, air transfers easily through, making wool both insulating and cooling as ambient air can not only pass around the fibers but also through them. If you want the warmth, sleep under the wool; if you want the fluffy feel, sleep on top of of it. Any way you use it will provide moisture wicking and temperature regulation. To read more about the properties of wool, see Wool’s Characteristics here.

The only substance used in its processing is a surfactant, which breaks the surface tension of the water, allowing the oily lanolin to float away in the washing water. Unlike conventional wool, our wool processing contains

  • NO bleach
  • NO acid bath
  • NO bonding
  • NO resin
  • NO carbonization
  • NO superwashing

You can also use it to make your own topper or comforter or quilt and even pillow.  Another great use for the wool batting is in mattress making. Wrap your latex layers inside your ticking to provide comfort and protection as in the video on our How It Works page, here. A wool wrap is the budget saving method for those who want the qualities of wool on their mattress, but want to purchase a less expensive, machine washable ticking, like our Knit Ticking, rather than the beautiful Quilted Ticking, which has wool quilted into it.

The wool batting you purchase here is either cut to your wrap your mattress size or cut to your requested yardage. Since each mattress size you select is a wrap, that means that you will have wool batting  to cover the top, the sides and the bottom of a 12″ mattress. In other words, the mattress size you select will provide you with two layers of wool. If a different amount of wool suits you, please select the option to purchase it by the yard.

As the batting is about 1/2″ thick, a wrap adds about 1″ height to your mattress. You can choose to add 1″ height to your ticking to let you feel the fluffiness of the wool or if you prefer the feel of the latex and merely want the protecting properties of the wool, then select ticking that is the height of your latex and zip that wool down tightly.

After compression, usually about 6 months, the wool batting will have compressed about 20%. Despite its compression, it will retain its comfort and insulating properties while losing its cloud-like, enveloping feel.

Crib: 1.9 yards
Twin \Twin XL: 2.4 yards
Full \ Full XL: 3.3 yards
Queen: 3.7 yards
CA King\Eastern King: 4.6 yards

The wool is 1.8lb per linear yard.

GOTS Organic Fabric

Posted on by — 1 Comment

GOTS certification: Our organic cotton fabric has attained the GOTS certification. The Global Organic Textile Standard is encompassing; it covers employee’s work standards, growing conditions and processing procedures. It prohibits use of formaldehyde, chlorine bleaches and dyes that release carcinogens. There are two grades available in the standard: level 1 requires the product to have 95% of its fibers organic, level two requires 70% of the materials’ fibers to be organic. Our fabric is not only grade 1, but our manufacturer keeps the fabric consistent and uses the same organic cotton threads for that last 5%. Our fabric then is 100% cotton and 100% organic. For more information, see the standard.

The standard is so complete, it covers on what tables fabric is cut and in what packages it is put.  Our cutting area is not certified nor is our packaging.  We do not display the GOTS logo with out fabric on their page because of our lack of certification. As we work out of our home, we couldn’t really certify our house.  However, we can say that we believe in living naturally, so we consciously keep our home free of chemicals and other pollutants.

Why choose organic fabric? Cotton is one of the most chemically sprayed crops in the US. In order to pick the cotton seeds from the plants with machines, the leaves must be removed from the stalk first. The sprays defoliate the leaves to allow the machine access to the cotton. They also protect the plant from the notorious boll weevil. In our pursuits to pursue chemical free options, the organic label gives the assurance of the fibers being processed consciously. The cotton for our fabric is grown in India, where pesticides have yet to become the dominant choice.

 

Quilted Ticking

Quilted Ticking

This quilted ticking is a zippered case, really a zippered quilt to complete your mattress. Organic latex slabs fit inside very nicely, as does our wool batting or any other fill. While it is very simple to use, it adds an elegant finishing look to your mattress. It is flexible, not constraining your pressure points sinking into your fill.  It is comfortable and breathable and provides protection from the elements to your fill inside it. Its traditional look completes any mattress build and adds a polished look to your DIY mattress.

Of all our cases, this quilted ticking is the strongest, able to withstand the weight of natural latex and even millet hulls with its lock stitching. Its thickness also serves to protect natural latex fill from the elements better than our knit ticking does, giving you a few more years of life out of your latex. Not surprisingly, common elements such as daily use, sunlight, poor air quality, temperature changes due to body heat and air vents can age your latex slightly faster than an unused piece of latex stored somewhere dark and dry.

The wool is quilted between two sheets of GOTS organic cotton fabric, our double knit on top and a flexible jersey fabric on bottom. Sealed with a three-sided zipper to allow easy access to loading and rearranging your fill. It opens like a book with the spine on either side.

Since taking the pictures, the stitching pattern has changed. You can see the new pattern in the last picture.

The wool is 1.8 lbs per linear yard.

Custom sizes available, contact us.

Expandable Knit Ticking

expandable GOTS organic cotton knit ticking feature

This case enables you to start small and plan to grow. Say, you purchased enough fill to fill 3″ of ticking, but you know that later when the budget allows or when the child grows heavier, you’ll want to deepen the mattress. Or say you are revamping your mattress little by little and want to buy a topper now with plans for adding more latex later. This case can grow with you.

Designed with a double zipper to reveal 3″ (or your choice of depth) more of fabric folded into the sidewall when you’re ready to insert another slab of latex. That way you do not have to buy a second piece of ticking for that second or third or fourth slab. Perfect for a child or a topper turned into a mattress. To explain further, imagine you bought one slab of latex for a topper on your guest bed because your mother-in-law was coming into town and the bed really needed something to spruce it up. But you bought the topper knowing that your child was soon going to be inheriting the guest bed as his mattress was falling apart. However, not having the immediate need to buy the two slabs of latex which would be comfortable for your 15 year old, you bought an expandable ticking that could fit both one slab just as nicely as two slabs. When the time came to buy that second slab, you didn’t need to buy a second piece of ticking to wrap the slab in. Instead you merely unzipped the second zipper on the ticking to reveal 3” more of fabric that was folded around the four sidewalls of the mattress.

The case opens, as do all of ours, like a book with a three-sided zipper, one long side remains unzipped. This ticking is preshrunk and is machine washable.

It is a smooth and thick fabric, ideal for letting your pressure points sink into the natural latex or wool underneath it. It also will protect your fill from dust and lint while containing it smoothly. Its slight stretch is due to the form of the fabric itself, the weaving of the threads, no elastic.

Our natural latex slabs fit inside very comfortably, whether they are in a bed mattress or a futon mattress. Latex’s flexible, bouncy nature fits this fabric perfectly. If you want a wool mattress, use our Twill Ticking and if you want a wool topper, use the sateen provided in our topper kit or have us make it for you.

NOTE: This ticking is excellent as a dust cover and a flexible barrier between you and the latex.  If you want to keep your latex fresh for its full lifespan, add multiple layers of wool batting inside the case or choose the Quilted Ticking as its thickness will protect the latex from elements that cause to degrade.

Made with our GOTS organic double knit cotton fabric, flexible and natural: 100% organic, 100% cotton.

To sew your own expandable ticking, see its pattern here or its pattern kit here.

Custom sizes and depths readily available, contact us.

Pressure Points

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Natural Latex

Some have called natural latex buoyant, some call it Santa’s belly, some just call it foam. No matter your name for it, natural latex will not feel like an innerspring mattress. It doesn’t transfer motion the same way, so you will not be woken by the whole bed jostling while your partner turns over. It doesn’t squeak either, so you can sneak out of that bed after putting your child to sleep. Also, because of the nature of the foam, latex is renowned for absorbing pressure points.

Pressure points are the points of your body that will receive the most pressure when your weight presses on them. When lying down on your side, these include your ankles, your hips, your shoulders and your head. On your back, the biggest pressure points are your heels, your butt, your shoulder blades and your head. Because side sleepers create the largest pressure points, they often prefer the soft and medium densities of latex. Back sleepers and stomach sleepers create less pressure points and usually prefer the medium or firm densities of latex.

Pressure mapping is a technique to identify how well a mattress is absorbing your pressure points. Using hundreds of sensors to test the pressure between your body and the mattress, it will produce an image with colored circles to identify how much pressure your body is receiving. A quick Google search for “pressure mapping latex” will bring up quite a few images showing how latex is able to relieve pressure from these supporting spots on our bodies. While this machine is a great invention, it does have its limitations, such as what happens when you roll over and what about pressure points created by injuries. Use it as a tool, but let your body be your judge.

Customers tell me stories of years of aches disappearing, back pains gone, new sleeping positions now enabled, being able to roll over without having to lift off the bed. Some even note that the small dips in the body, such as the small of the back and waist actually being supported by the latex, now that every part of their body can sink in. Why does latex and absorb our pressure points? One mattress guru calls it progressive compression. When latex compresses, the latex doesn’t just move to the side like water in a water bed or take up empty air space like springs do, the latex compacts underneath you. This puts a very supportive layer of latex underneath your pressure points while at the same time, allowing you to sink in. Elasticity combined with density produces a very durable and comfortable foam.

Wool

Not only does natural latex absorb pressure points, but wool does as well. It has a unique ability to remain soft even after its compression. Unlike cotton, it will never turn hard.  Due to the composition of the wool fiber, its spiral shape lets the fibers stretch instead of just bending like a cotton fiber does. This stretching is what lets you sink in beyond its presumably flat surface. While wool may provide a firm sleeping surface, it also allows space for even side sleepers’s pressure points to be accomodated.

Of Interest

LATEX
WOOL
ORGANIC COTTON
UPHOLSTERY TIPS
General Information
Tools and Supplies
Calculators

FAQ

If your question isn’t answered here or in the product guide section, feel free contact us.


Q. Do you offer curbside pickup?
Q. What is the average turn around on an order?
Q. What is your shipping policy?
Q. What is the lifespan of your parts?
Q. What is your warranty?
Q. What of these products do you make yourself?
Q. Tell me about your organic certificates.
Q. Your articles on wool suggest wool is a great fiber.  Why don’t you make your ticking out of wool fabric?
Q. When you say Chemical-Free bedding parts, what does that mean?
Q. Do you have any wholesale rates? Could you make our company a product for resale?

fancy line

Q. Do you offer curbside pickup?
A. Yes (In Person Pickup) and No (Curbside). You are welcome to come to our workroom/showroom in Brooklyn Park, MN to pickup up any sewn good such as ticking, and pillow kits, pillow fills and Fabrics. Please knock (door is always locked) and we will greet you and your items will be bagged and ready for you.

In Person pickups must be scheduled.

  1. Let us know that you want to pickup in the Order Notes box on the Checkout page.
  2. You will receive an email when your product is ready.
  3. Schedule a time to pickup. Address is 7600 Boone Ave. Suite 80, Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
  4. Any shipping charges you may have paid will be refunded when your items are picked up.

Q. What is the average turn around on an order?
A. 1-4 weeks, depending on what you order. Pillow Kits and loose fills generally ship out within a week of ordering date. Natural Latex slabs and sewn pieces like ticking ship around the two week mark. Custom work can take up to 4 weeks to ship.  Please keep in mind, while we often keep these timetables, these estimates are just generalities. If your product has not arrived by the hopeful date, it is still coming and has not been forgotten.

Q. What is your shipping policy?
A. Our items process for up to 3 weeks and then ship out.
Flat rate, shared shipping is available to continental US customers.  Canadian and other international customers will need to contact us with an address to get a shipping estimate.

Shared shipping means that some of the shipping costs we will share with you as you probably don’t want to pay $70 shipping per piece of natural latex coming your way.

Click here to see the chart with the flat rate shipping charged per item.

Items may ship from different locations.  This means that multiple items may arrive at your house at different times and with individual tracking numbers.  An email will be sent your way with a tracking number as soon the shipment is processed.

Q. What is the lifespan of your parts?
A. To read in depth about any of our parts, visit the Of Interest. However, in brief here are the stats:

  • Natural Latex – 20-30 years
  • Wool – forever, until the moths eat it. It may want to be relofted every 8 years or so.
  • Shredded Natural Latex – 15 years. It will slowly harden, but won’t crumble much.
  • Millet Hulls – Quite a while. The best grades of hulls are shipped overseas, so while there are some that never break down, I think it would be safe to say 5 years or more.
  • Kapok Fiber – After 1 year of use, the fibers in a pillow will turn into smallish balls, a little larger than wooly bolas.  This is why we include more fill in the pillow kits than you will initially need. Otherwise, they have no limit to their lifespan.

Q. What is your warranty?
A. To read it in depth, visit our Warranty link at the bottom of the page.  In brief:

  • Natural Latex – 15 years
  • Sewing Work – 5 years

Q. What of these products do you make yourself?
A. We sew all our fabric goods including tickings, pillow liners and cases and any custom jobs you send our way.

Q. Tell me about your organic certificates.
A. In our shop, organic is certified organic. We are terribly honest and do not declare something organic if it is not. We also believe in the natural goodness of plants and animals so we offer some products that are simply natural such as our small farm wool and our kapok pillow fill. By the way, despite what you see on Amazon, there is no one who produces organic kapok for sale by the lb. It all is natural.

Whether fabric or latex, the certification certifies that the product and the warehouse are certified at the time that we bought the product. They are actually transaction certifications, ceritfying the purchase date, rather than the life of the product. Certifications are required to be renewed for every new product run and fairly often we haven’t sold out of our current product before the certificate expires. The product remains as organic as it was when we bought it even if its manufacturer’s certificate has moved on to the next batch and we haven’t posted the new certificate because we haven’t restocked the product. While we will keep updating the certificates, do note that our product is certified even when our supply room is waiting for new stock.

See our certifications below.

Q. Your articles on wool suggest wool is a great fiber.  Why don’t you make your ticking out of wool fabric?
A. Wool is an excellent and very versatile fiber.  If you know of a source for 90″ wool fabric who is willing to talk about where their wool comes from, let us know and we’ll get sewing.

Q. When you say Chemical-Free bedding parts, what does that mean?
A. “Chemical-Free” means three things:

  • No chemicals have been used in the growing or processing of the materials (i.e. wool, cotton).
  • Every chemical we can choose to leave out of the processing of our products we do. Natural latex does require chemicals to create the foam; however in the end, natural latex is 96% rubber and most of the chemicals are burned up.
  • In the emission tests performed by OekoTex (on the latex and cotton) nothing of worthy consideration shows up.

Q. Do you have any wholesale rates? Could you make our company a product for resale?
A. Yes, most definitely. Please see our wholesale page for a full list of service offered.

About

We are a bedding parts supplier. We are here to enable you to make your own chemical free, natural bedding, be it pillows, mattresses, blankets, comforters, etc.

Natural latex from Sri Lanka, wool from local farms and GOTS organic ticking could make your mattress. Kapok fiber, shredded natural latex, or millet hulls could fill your pillows.

We specialize in custom work, in natural products and in educating ourselves and you about our products.

We have all the firmnesses of natural latex available for you to rearrange to find the perfect comfort in our showroom, as well as samples of all our offerings. It is often helpful to lay on one to determine what firmness and comfort level is right for you before you purchase the foam or the pillow fills.

OUR STORY:

We needed to buy mattresses. Two of them. As this event doesn’t come around very often, we thought: “Let’s do it right. Let’s get the very best mattress we can.”

For us, very best meant no chemical flame retardants and no synthetic fabrics. These mattresses were for our two girls, ages 2 and 4 at the time. They were going to be stuck with these mattresses for a while so we wanted to get them ones that weren’t going to combine comfort with slowly decomposing their organs.  A little internet research soon deflated my excitement over the purchase. An organic twin mattress was $1400. Even the cheapest one we could find, an all wool 4″ futon mattress, was $400. We didn’t have that kind of money, especially not with a third child on the way.  Further internet research led me down the same trails. I was stumped.

Then I asked myself, could we make a mattress? That is what we do, after all; we like to make things, from scratch, especially in the kitchen.  Picking ingredients deliberately can make a great tasting dish and bring out subtle flavor, so also, deliberately sourcing bedding materials could make a comfortable and chemical free mattress. “If it can be bought, I can make it,” I’ve always said. Perhaps we could make a mattress.

First we had to find our supplies. At the time in 2010, I found only one online post of anyone else making their own mattress, so I felt I was breaking new ground. What to use?

Cotton is natural, but getting cotton batting, while inexpensive in individual sheets, would end up being expensive if we purchased enough to fill a mattress. It would be heavy and it would compress quickly, lending itself uncomfortable. Plus, we would have to shake it out weekly to get rid of dust mites. Phew, that’s too many things against cotton batting.

Wool was an accessible batting. Surely we could use sheets of wool which was loftier than cotton. But how much? Who knew. And how high would it be? Wool does compress over time, so how high would it end up being?

Enter natural latex. Made from the rubber tree, it boasts of being buoyant and luxurious enough to be sold as mattress toppers. The real seller for us was that we could pick the height and have a better guess at the height of the mattress, while still using natural products not treated with chemicals.

So, with two cotton futon covers that we purchased, we bought 2 batts of wool comforter batting and 1.5″ of natural latex for each mattress. It was still a lot of money for us to come up with, $212 for each mattress, but it was not $1400 or even $400 each. We wrapped the latex with the two batts of wool and zippered it in the cases. The mattress were quite lofty, though with that much wool, they did compress over a year from 4″ to 3″. When the girls were older (4 & 6), we opened their mattresses and added in an extra 1.5″ of latex to support their growing sizes.

While the cases were completely washable (and very shrinkable), to save ourselves the hassle of taking them off, we bought a couple of wool blankets at the thrift store. After the blankets were felted in the washing machine a few times, they thickened up quite nicely, to almost 1″ thick. Now we have puddle pads.

And there you have it. You can make a mattress, a puddle pad, a wool blanket yourself. If you can sew, you can make your own ticking and quilts and pillow cases and, well, check out the Community tab for ideas.  If you don’t want to, let us make them for you.

All Natural Bedding

Posted on by — Leave a comment
All Natural Bedding

All Natural Bedding

To keep you healthy and toxin free and to give you choice in your bedding, our mattress parts and pillows fills are completely natural. No chemicals whatsoever. Not only the cleanest bedding you’ve seen, but also the highest quality parts.

All our products are plant based, except for wool, of course, which from sheep.  For detailed information on any of these parts, see our Of Interest section.

Natural Latex – from the Hevea Brasiliensis tree grown in Sri Lanka
Millet Hulls – from organically grown millet in CO
Kapok Fiber – from Ceiba trees in India
Cotton – from organic farms in India
Wool – from local farms around MN