History of cotton sliver for spinners
Back in the colonial days when everyone had to make their own yarns and clothing, the spinning wheel and spindles were important tools in homes. As yarns and clothing became available to purchase, people gave up their wheels and spinning tools gladly. Wheels that had a variety of ratios were few and far between when during the “hippie” days young people took up spinning again. Since wool was readily available all over the country, it was the fiber of choice and thus wheels were built to spin long fibers like wool and other protein fibers.
ZOOM LECTURES ABOUT COTTON
Cotton From the Field to the Loom: This lecture varies according to the needs of the audience watching the zoom. Spinners or Weavers? Includes the plants, harvesting and processing the fiber into sliver and then yarn.
How to Select, Use and Weave with Cotton Yarns: This is great for weavers who are concerned about using handspun and commercial cotton yarns.
In the late 60’s and the 70’s when Harry and Olive Linder were teaching and trying to introduce cotton spinning to spinners across the USA, they would go to the cotton gin in Phoenix and purchase a 480 # bale of cotton since there was no carded sliver available for hand spinners. The wheels only had a 6/1 ratio, so the cotton had to be carded on carders and then spun on the slow ratio.
Sally Fox, (Vreseis) came into the cotton pictures in the end of the 60’s, beginning of the 70’s as she was promoting organic brown and green cotton. She really struggled to survive over the chemical companies and big farming but with the help of many thoughtful and good spinners she has developed some wonderful colored cotton for spinners. Sally, like Kay Fielding and Eileen Hallman realized that commercial sliver that was used on electric spinning gins had all the crimp taken out of the fiber. They each started producing and selling cotton sliver that did not have the crimp removed. About the time, Joan was really teaching a lot, all three ladies stopped producing sliver with crimp in it for different personal reasons and Joan was without a resource of good spinning cotton sliver. At that time she founded a source to card “Easy to Spin” cotton sliver that was carded perfectly for hand spinners. For years Jill Holbrook and Lura Moore of Tucson marketed “Easy to Spin” under Brookmoore Creations for Joan but in 2023 the distributorship of “Easy to Spin” changed to Lunatic Fringe Yarn. So, if you want “Easy to Spin” cotton sliver, contact Michele or Katzy at https://lunaticfringeyarns.com.