[lexierowsell]

Happened upon a neighbor throwing away their landscaping today, a whole bunch of mature cotton!

I, of course, grabbed it all.

What do I do now?

Cotton is still a novelty to me, I am from Canada and until just now, had never even touched a cotton plant despite residing in Texas... I always got sick from the spray in the fields!

 

[Lythrum]

I am no expert on doing anything with cotton, but I think how you use it might have to do with the staple length of the cotton fibers. I saw this awesome video on spinning from the seed on YouTube (Hope the link works) and really want to try it one of these days. And testify sister, living in Alabama I feel your pain on getting sick from the spray, I always end up with stuffy sinuses whenever they do it. I know it can't be healthy to be exposed to that.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4kU9-ThVpM[/ame]

 

[hotzcatz]

Pull the lint off the seeds and spin it.

A friend at quilting group has a noodle maker that he uses to pull the fiber off the seeds, although I think it might damage the fibers. Then he cards it and rolls it into punis. If you google "cotton puni" all sorts of links will appear. Then he spins from the end of the puni, I think.

Some cotton has a longer staple than others. Some is softer than others. Some comes off the seeds easier than others. Some comes in colors, some is shiny.

 

[lexierowsell]

Oh boy. I watched the video about spinning from the seed, and at the end of her spinning demo she also shows just tearing it off the seed, haha!

Any reason why I couldn't just spend a while picking seeds out, collecting fiber in a bin, then carding and puni-ing (who knew that word sounded like "pony" and not "p-ewe-ny"!) a whole bunch?

 

[hotzcatz]

Sounds like a good plan to me! That's pretty much what my friend does. It's a pretty clean fiber and doesn't need washing before spinning. He did say something about boiling the yarn afterwards, though.