My mom was a rabid shopper, honing that mundane activity into a cross between art and marathon, dragging us kids along for lack of a better idea.
I hated the entire process: the squeal of hangers along a metal rod, my sister watching herself dance in a mirror, my baby brother crawling on worn carpet and collecting buttons fallen from messy racks.
Because I was the oldest, my mom explained everything to me as the clothes screeched past: too kitschy, too scratchy, sloppy stitching, needs dry cleaning. But occasionally she would pause: “Look at that! All cotton. Too bad it’s ugly.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
When she glared, I rolled my eyes. “That it’s cotton?”
“Feel it,” she said, pulling the gaudy blouse from the rack for my inspection.
I tapped it with my finger and said, “So what?” (Yup, I was a handful.)
Fabric from the oil fields
Of course, these expeditions were in the days before cotton clothing became a curiosity, before we made most yarns from a petrochemical stew forced through a sieve and labeled nylon, polyester, and acrylic. It was also before we prized easy care over durability, price over utility.
Eventually, I adopted my mom’s love for cotton — though not for shopping — and learned to recognize it by texture and appearance. But I thought little about it in the years that followed, until my husband repurposed our cotton baby diapers for buffing cars and rifles, and later went ballistic when he unwittingly bought a pair of stretch denim jeans: “If they stretch, they’re not jeans.”
But I didn’t become a diehard cotton convert until I began quilting. At that point, nothing would do but 100 percent pure cotton fabric, batting, and thread, just like my grandma loved.
A slow and steady slide
Although cotton has long been a staple of U.S. agriculture, production has bounced around for various reasons. It peaked in 1937 when we produced 18.9 million bales and has been decreasing since. In the 2023-2024 season, we produced 12.07 million bales, most of which went to China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia for the textile industry.1
In the United States, commercial cotton gets a bad rap from growers, environmentalists, and even beekeepers. Known for slurping large amounts of water, pesticides, and fertilizer, it yields scads of tainted runoff, degraded land, and toxic working conditions. And despite cotton’s utility, the stigma of cotton fields in the history of the American South still resonates.
However, some people believe cotton will make a comeback. The reason, in a word, is microplastics. Many people weary of plastic clothing are revisiting cotton and other natural fibers for petrochemical relief …
