The Journey Of Cotton – From Fiber To Yarn

The story begins with me commenting on one of my friend, Sam’s post. She grew this cotton plant in her garden. The color of the blossoms kept changing from yellow to pink to red. How exciting it must be to grow it!

She later posted this picture showing the cotton fiber that came out of this plant.

I commented on that post showing my awe and asked her what she was going to use it for. She said that she will be using it for making cotton wicks for lighting lamps for God. She asked me if I wished to have some of the fiber. How can a fiber artist like me say no to fiber? Of course, I said, “Yes”. But I didn’t know that she also will be adding other lovely gifts for me and Shaman.

This is the home grown organic cotton fiber from Sam’s garden. She cleaned the fiber so nicely of all the VM(vegetable matter). I absolutely love this out of all the gifts she sent me.

I got her gifts on April 1, 2021, but hadn’t got around to using the fiber. I was a bit preoccupied with making my Marigold Garden Bedcover since a couple of days. I am finally done with making that. I was searching for my next project. My soul had been itching to use this fiber since I got it. So, I decided to turn it into yarn.

I began by combing the fibers with a pet brush and making small rolags. The fiber is so soft with a glowing aura. It feels like Egyptian cotton on my hands.

It is a native cotton grown in Chennai. The leaves of this plant are kept on newborn baby’s head. They say that it fills the hole on the top of the baby’s head faster and allows babies to have a calm sleep.

I am still a beginner at spinning. I tried using the drop spindle but the fiber kept on breaking due to very short staple length. So I chickened out of using the drop spindle. I used my hands instead and prepared a single ply thread. This was a very slow process with me wetting my fingers with water while I patiently prepared the thread.

Next thing I did was, make it into a 2-ply yarn. Again, I tried using the drop spindle, but the fiber kept on breaking. So I hand spun this yarn. It is a ‘S’ twist yarn which I am most comfortable to make than the ‘Z’ twist. Maybe because I am left handed and ‘S’ just feels right on my hands.

I wanted to make the maximum use of this fiber, so I tried plying it as thin as I could. This way, I could get a better length of yarn. The resulting yarn is a slightly thick and thin Light Fingering weight yarn with a 16 WPI. I got a mini skein of 16 yards out of 7g of fiber. How cool is that!

Something was missing. Hmm, it needed drama, lol. So I hand dyed it in pinks and purples. Here is how my variegated “Drama Queen” looks in the end. I’ll take some better pictures in the daylight. I don’t think the colors look too good in the night light. I’ll update with more pictures later.

I made this short video showing the details of this gorgeous yarn: