Happy birthday sewing machine! and how to make a mattress

In honor of my sewing machine's 21st birthday (and by extension, my 30th), I'm posting the directions for how I made the two twin mattresses in our guest room.  Happy birthday sewing machine!  It seems like I got you only yesterday, and now you're old enough to drink...

100% cotton, chemical free, handmade mattress

WARNING: What follows is a long detailed post about how to actually make a mattress based on the directions in Making a Cotton Mattress: An Aid to Extension and Village Workers in Many Countries created by the USDA in 1966, which I originally found at Root Simple.  The original notion that this was a doable project came from a post at a blog called Butterpies.

For the first mattress I followed the directions in the USDA manual exactly, except in cases where the directions geared towards the developing world in 1966 didn't apply.  For the second mattress I made a few adjustments.  Below is a basic outline of what the USDA manual says with my amendments.

Making a mattress is a lot simpler than you might think.  By far the hardest part was finding the right materials, especially needles.  The rest is just time (about 13 hours if working by yourself).

You will need: 

- 5.5 to 9 yards of fabric, depending on how wide your fabric is (see manual).  The manual recommends that the fabric should be at least 8 oz.  I bought an entire bolt of 10 oz canvas from Big Duck Canvas Warehouse because a) they had a special on it and b) they sent me free samples of canvas in different weights and generally had amazing customer service.  10 oz is heavy, especially after washing.  Most ticking fabric I found (the pretty striped kind you associate with an old fashioned mattress) was 7 oz.  Probably would have been okay, but I figured for the amount of work I was going to put in, I wanted something durable and easy to clean.  No regrets about going with the canvas except that it shrunk more than I expected (in cold water, line dried) and was a pain to iron after washing.  In hindsight, just iron it enough so that you can cut it more or less accurately and the rest of the wrinkles will work themselves out from being pulled so tightly.

- Stuffing.  The USDA manual recommends 35 lbs of dry, loose cotton, because in 1966 Brazil you might have that lying around.  I went with cotton upholstery batting from onlinefabricstore.net.  White Lotus also has a whole array of stuffing materials that I considered, and they were a close runner up in terms of price for cotton.

Environmentally, cotton is a pretty destructive crop to grow.  It requires a lot of pesticides and water and destroys the soil it grows on. Organic cotton (which at least removes the pesticide issue), is incredibly expensive.  "Green" cotton claims to be remnant cotton that is scraped up from the floor of the mill and would supposedly otherwise be thrown out.  White Lotus specifically advertises its cotton as "green", however after a bit of research, it seems like any unpunched batting you buy mostly comes from leftover cotton that can't be used for anything else anyhow, whether its advertised that way or not.  I didn't verify this...I just used it to justify to myself going with the lower cost non-green, non-organic batting.

The cotton bundles from onlinefabricstore.net claim to be 13 lbs each (I did not weigh them).  I used 3.5 bundles per extra-long twin mattress (45.5 lbs).

I considered using a layer of wool.  Organic mattress companies have a lot of good things to say about wool: fire resist, water resistant, temperature regulating, naturally bed bug/ bed mite resistant. I believe the first two claims, and am willing to accept the third one.  As far as bed mite resistance goes, I found some journal articles that suggested the opposite, got frustrated, and then decided I could always make a mattress topper our of wool later.

- Thread.  Get a good, heavy quality.  It's going to be under a lot of pressure from the stuffing.

- Strong cord. I got button twine that was specifically advertised for tufting from Tedco Industries (item TW-TU02 in their 2015 catalog).   DO NOT skimp out on this.  Tufting is the second most time consuming part of the whole mattress making process and if your tufts break, you will cry.

Seriously.  Don't buy cheap needles.

- Spear point tufting needle.  The first mattress I made was almost a disaster because I originally bought what was labeled as a "tufting needle" from Walmart (the only store that carries sewing supplies nearby).  I might as well have been trying to sew with a pipe cleaner or a chopstick.  I bought some needles off Ebay that weren't much better.  In frustration, I consulted Butterpies' blog to see if she had any advice, but all I could find was a picture of a small child easily pushing a needle through a mattress.  Why do you taunt me Butterpies?  Why?  J tried to help, but just snapped my second to last needle in half.  Together we researched how to sharpen needles and learned a lot of fun facts about how to be a safe heroin user.  Educational, but unfortunately nothing described there worked on cheap sewing needles.

I finally ended up on the website of a commercial needle manufacturer that only sold in bulk (unfortunately I don't remember who this was).  I called the number on their website and someone really nice talked me through needle selection and then gave me the names of a few people that they sell to.  One of these was Tedco Industries.  Their customer service and shipping rates were pretty terrible, but they got me what I needed- an 8" single spear point straight needle, part #TL-N08SS.  The USDA manual recommends a 16" needle, but I found the skinnier 8" easier to push through my 5" mattress.

- Curved needle.  The USDA manual recommends 7".  I ended up soldiering through both mattresses with a shorter, skinnier curved needle from Walmart and then the 8" tufting needle.  A spear point, decent quality curved needle will make things go a lot faster.

- Pins, tape measure, scissors, sewing machine.

- Platform for working on.  Ideally you need something where you can pass the needle through the mattress and grab it from the underside without lifting the mattress. I used a pop-up trundle bed frame. The USDA manual recommends wood slats supported on something.

Abbreviated How To 
(see USDA manual for details)

An honest look at the mess you'll make.
If you find yourself reaching for a power drill
and/or hammer, reassess your life.
Note: cotton fluff takes FOREVER to get out
of carpet.  Work on a hard floor if you can.

1. Decide how big you want your mattress to be (length x width) and cut two pieces of cloth to those dimensions plus 1.5 inches for every foot in length and width (so if you want a 6' x 4' mattress, cut your fabric to 6' 9" x 4' 6").  You'll want to round the edges on these.  There is a pattern for round edges in the USDA manual if you want to be exact, otherwise just make the same nice gentle, mattress like curve on all four corners.

2. Decide how thick you want the mattress to be and create a long strip of fabric 1" wider than that.  Calculate the perimeter of your finished mattress. For every foot, add 1.5".  That will be the length of your strip of fabric.

The USDA manual is for a 4" mattress, which seems really thin compared to today's standard foam-core mattresses.  The first mattress I made was 4", the second 5".  If you're going for a firm mattress (I was), I think 4" or 5" is fine.   The comfort will really depend on what sort of bed frame you have. For a softer mattress, you want something thicker so that you don't sink through and feel the bed slats under you.

3. Cut four pieces of cloth for handles that are 5" wide by however thick your final mattress will be plus 1".

4. Follow the directions in the USDA manual to sew this all together.  Basically you are going to make a box, but only sew the top on one side (so a box with a lid).  Be sure to sew the handles into the edge seems.

5.  Make some cotton tufts.  The manual recommends just balling up some cotton (56  pieces for a twin mattress...more for a large mattress or if personal preference dictates.  Luxury mattresses like to advertise more tufts).  I decided to roll my cotton tufts in little squares of cloth and then sew them shut.  It looked nicer and sturdier.  The manual wants you to make marks with a pencil for where to put your tufts on the fabric prior to sewing.  I found this faster: after sewing, lay out your sewn mattress box on the floor with the top and bottom pieces perfectly lined up (the top is the one that you haven't completely sewn shut yet).  Mark where you want the tufts on the top piece with a pin (going through both pieces of fabric) and a pencil mark.  Flip the whole thing over and put a pin through what is now the top piece of fabric wherever there is already a pin.  Flip everything back over and remove the pins that were going through both layers (leaving the pins in the single bottom layer). Your tufts are now marked on the bottom with pins and on the top with pencil.

6. Spread your empty mattress box on your work surface and carefully layer your stuffing inside.  Try to be systematic and make nice even layers, occasionally adding an extra layer going vertically down the middle and varying where the the pieces join in each layer.  Wrap the edges of the batting into the corners when starting a new layer so that the corners are extra stuffed.  If you're using batting, you shouldn't have to beat it into nice even layers like the manual describes, since the batting is already flat.  Note how mounded the middle the mattress looks in the pictures in the USDA manual at this stage. The batting doesn't have to be quite this mounded, but you want some mounding or else you will end up with a mattress that sinks in the middle as it wears.  I used about 45 lbs of cotton for both my 4" and 5" thick, extra long, twin mattresses.  I would sleep on concrete if J would let me, so I'm not a great judge of softness.  I consider the 4" mattress comfortable and the 5" slightly soft, but still comfortable. The half dozen house guests that have slept on them have described them both as very to moderately firm.  Butterpies used 18 lbs of wool for a 2" mattress, the USDA manual recommends 35 lbs of cotton for a standard 4" twin.

7. Sew the remaining three sides of the top shut.  I used the button twine for this.  Hand sewing takes forever.  Get a friend and sew towards each other from opposite sides for both this and step 10. A good needle will save time.  I ended up reverting to my fancy 8" tufting needle because the little needle made my fingers sore and I didn't have anything better.

Hand sewing the edge

8. Don't lie on the mattress!  You're going to really want to.  Don't! Don't do it!

9.  Lace the mattress.  The manual tells you to do this with one piece of thread.  Instead, I pulled individual pieces of button twine down and back up through each place I needed a tuft (where the pencil marks are on the top).  The manual says specifically not to do this...I don't know why.  If you used pins to mark the bottom in step #5, you can just feel for where you need the needle to come through on the bottom rather than looking underneath for a pencil marks.  Make sure the piece of button twine is long enough that it won't accidentally get pulled back through the mattress while you're tightening things up in the next step.  Loosely knot the two ends of twine for each tuft on top of the mattress.

10.  Create a rolled edge to firm up the mattress and make it sturdier.  I used button twine here and didn't attempt to force stuffing into the rolled edge as the manual describes.  This means that I ended up with more of ruffle going around the edges than a roll.  Functionally, I don't think it makes a difference, but it probably would make your mattress look like it has a crisper edge under the sheets (mine is kind of floppy and futon like). First you'll "roll" the edge on the top, then flip the mattress over and roll the edge on the bottom.  The directions in the USDA manual are kind of confusing, basically think of "rolling the edge" as making a ruffle around the entire edge (either with stuffing squeezed into it or not), where the seems for the "ruffle" are 2.25" from the edge of the original edge seem on the top and 0.25" from the original edge seem on the bottom.

11.  While the mattress is flipped bottom side up, insert your cotton tufts under the loop formed by the button twine you pulled through at each marked spot in step #9.  Remember to remove all the pins.  Carefully flip the mattress over again so that it is top side up.

12.  Tie the tufts.  My method for this was a bit funny.  You want them all tied with even tension.  Basically, I decided that the weight of my entire body was the most even pressure I could apply, so for each tuft, I climbed on top of the mattress, centered the knot between my two big toes, inserted a cotton tuft under the button twine, and tied it in place with a plain double knot.

Like it was there all along!  Note random copper pipe still waiting to be repaired from hydronic heating fail 2015

You're done!  You can now lie down on the mattress (assuming you didn't already in step 8).