00:02From your favorite pair of jeans to that perfectly worn good for every occasion t-shirt,
00:07cotton apparel has been a staple in our wardrobe and culture for centuries.
00:11But have you ever wondered how that fluffy white plant is transformed into
00:14the clothes we know and love? We are here at Cotton Incorporated to show you the
00:19dirt-to-shirt story of how cotton garments are made.
00:27The process begins, you guessed it, in the dirt. The cotton belt spans 17 states in the U.S.
00:33and planting begins as early as February in some of the southern states. Depending on moisture and
00:38temperature, seedlings appear within a week or two, but it isn't until later in the summer and
00:42fall that the cotton plant is ready for harvest. Big tractors, known as cotton pickers, get to work
00:50harvesting cotton from the field. After the cotton is stripped from the field, it is
00:56packed into huge modules and taken to the gin to be cleaned. Ginning is the process in
01:01which the cotton fiber is separated from the seeds and stems, but even though the
01:05fiber is the building block of our dirt-to-shirt story, all parts of the
01:09cotton plant are utilized in some way or another. Other parts of the plants that
01:13are utilized are the cotton seed, which can be used in cooking, as well as linters,
01:17which can be used in food and also non-woven products like wipes. Once the cotton is
01:24ginned, the fiber is ready to go to factories across the U.S. and around the
01:27world to be processed into yarn and eventually fabric. Our cotton arrives here,
01:33Cotton Incorporated in Cary, North Carolina. You know Cotton Incorporated as the
01:37folks behind the fabric of our lives, but something you might not know, they don't
01:41actually make any consumer goods at all. The role of Cotton Incorporated is really to
01:46research and promote all of the different phases of the dirt-to-shirt
01:49process across the entire supply chain of apparel manufacturing. So when the
01:56cotton arrives from the gin, it's in a bale. This is about 480 pounds of cotton.
02:02And as you can tell, this cotton really has gotten cleaned some, but still needs
02:06additional cleaning. The cotton fiber travels through the duct system to the
02:16next step, carding and drawing. Once the cotton is cleaned, it ends in this carding
02:21machine here. And carding helps to align and straighten the fiber similar to
02:26combing your hair. This hypnotic process turns the fiber into a sliver, a thick,
02:32continuous thread that gets spooled into big cylinders. Cotton slivers come off the
02:37carding machine and now they will be drawn. So you can see here that you're
02:43combining about six different slivers and these will all be combined together and
02:49leveled to create one sliver that is more consistent at the end of the process.
02:59Spinning twists the sliver around and around until it is tightly spun in a thin
03:04yet strong yarn. So the spinning system is essentially just rotating the fiber
03:09around and around and around until you've got a yarn. And as you can see, now I
03:16can't pull this apart, whereas before it pulls apart easily. We arrive at the
03:24knitting phase. Thousands of little needles pulse up and down to transform the
03:28yarn into fabric. Cotton is extremely versatile and can be turned into
03:33thousands of types of fabric with a variety of purposes. And here we've got
03:37some examples of different fabrics that have been created through our product
03:41development team over the years. As you can see here, we've created thousands of
03:46fabrics over the last 30 years through this Fabricast collection and these
03:50really set as an inspiration for brands and retailers and manufacturers for
03:56creating unique and fun cotton apparel. Now the fabric gets customized in the
04:04dyeing phase. Dye cycles through the machine, slowly and evenly changing the
04:08color from white to black. As the dye comes into the machine, it penetrates the
04:14fabric as it loops around the system. The final phase of the process here at
04:20Cotton Incorporated is drying and finishing. So what you can see here is we've got a
04:25laboratory pad that's connected to a tenor frame. The fabric is dipped into a
04:33liquid bath that contains a finish and then squeezed through a pad to remove
04:36excess liquid. It's a little bit wet so it goes through here this dryer or tenor
04:43frame. As the fabric dries, the finish will add softness or performance features
04:47like stain resistance or moisture management. The freshly dyed black fabric
04:52rolls up and is ready to go to the garment manufacturer. Here the fabric is
04:58rolled out onto a cutting table. T-shirt forms are placed over the fabric and an
05:06expert hand methodically cuts the fabric into shape. The pieces are stitched and sewn together and the
05:22finishing touch is added. The 100% cotton label. In fact, checking the tag is the only
05:28way to ensure your products are cotton and not any other type of fabric. While we have come to know
05:35and
05:35love cotton for its quality and comfort, its sustainability is truly what makes
05:39cotton a cut above. Cotton not only provides us with great clothing, it also
05:43provides income to growers to feed their families around the world. In addition to
05:48that, it's a naturally drought tolerant crop that's also biodegradable. And as an
05:53industry, cotton has really been a leader in sustainability and our learnings have
05:57been transposed into other industries to really help move the needle on large-scale
06:01agriculture. The next time you put on a cotton shirt, remember the care and precision that
06:06went into every stage of the process from dirt to shirt.
