Bamboo
In the last few months I’ve been researching Bamboo batting. I’ve seen it in one quilt and have decided that my next few quilts will have Bamboo in them. Why? Partly because it will be better for the environment. The growing and processing of cotton is very environmentally unfriendly and I use plenty of it in my patchwork.
The virtues of bamboo are many. It’s like a weed in that grows without any or at least little attention, uses little water and, commercially, pesticides aren’t needed. It’s amazingly soft and flexible, has amazing water wicking properties, as well as having natural anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and more importantly for my quilt usage it’s cool in summer and warm in winter and doesn’t loose its softness and flexibility if heavily quilted.
Before going down this Bamboo in my quilts road, I have been trialling the use of bamboo in everyday products. I’ve got half a dozen bamboo towels, they wash up brilliantly, are amazingly soft and absorb water like you can’t believe. As well I’ve bought some bamboo throws from Pure Zone and one lonely bamboo singlet. All amazing soft, flexible and well-used.
So on Friday night after work I popped in to the city, Melbourne, to grab a eReader, a Kobo, from Angus & Robertson and on the way back I dropped into Lincraft to look at what, if any, Bamboo batting they had.
They had the “Sew Easy 100% Bamboo Batting – 254 cm wide, precut” as well as a cot size, all pre-packaged. I think I’ve seen Bamboo batting at Spotlight as well. I haven’t seen it at any quilt shops so far, but I know that it’s available on the roll because I’ve seen it pre-packaged as Matilda’s Own from Victorian Textiles.
While searching for bamboo batting I also came across Soybean & Cotton mix batting. Haven’t been able to find out much about it however some suggestions are that it is longer lasting than other fibres. Here’s a link to Hancock’s of Paducah with regard to Soy-Cotton batting by Moda.
Now I’m off to clean up my sewing room as my friend who likes to pack and clean up is coming to visit tomorrow. Yikes I’d hate for her to venture in there with the cleaning bug I’d never find any of my projects.
ciao for now
Jenn
5foot1quilts 
Lucky you with a kobo…what’s the difference between a kobo and a kindle?
This is not a riddle, i want to know cos I want one.
Hi Margaret,
If I see you this week I’ll bring my reader over. The Kobo has its limitations and we have our limitations being in Australia due to the publishing restrictions that publishers impose regarding importation, very involved. I’m using the Kobo for relaxation & novel reading. The Kobo is a 6″ (diagonal sizing) display perfect for holding & reading novels, to me at least. There are better eReaders around but not at this price point. I also use a program called Calibre which lets me manipulate documents as I choose.
Kindle have just brought out a 9.7 inch sized Kindle which I’m interested in for text books and PDFs etc. For Kindle which delivers books over wireless 3G, free I believe, we may be just in the coverage area. Kindle uses a distinct type of ebook format with DRM protection.
Hope that gives you some idea. I can explain more in person. Got to go back to cleaning up my sewing room, its looking so much better after just an hour.
ciao