Comforters and Quilts
What goes into your comforter or quilt will determine not only how toasty you stay at night but also how well rested you wind up the next morning. Plant and animal fibers prove more than a match for conventional varieties, providing warmth, luxurious textures and minimal impact on the planet.
Look for Organic Certification and products meeting the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which requires fair labor practices and tracks every stage of fiber production to ensure that pesticides, heavy-metal dyes, chlorine bleach and other eco-hazards are avoided.
Natural comforters may be a bit pricey, but with your home heat turned down a few extra degrees, your fuel savings may just make up the difference.
ORGANIC COTTON
West Elm carries 100% organic cotton, spa quality duvet covers and the cotton is grown without pesticides or herbicides.
Coyuchi is a company that offers fair-trade 100% certified organic cotton bedding, towels, robes and blankets, all High quality products. They received the Nations Second Annual Fashion Industry Award for Environmental Excellence.
ORGANIC LINEN
Linen is very special and a bit of a purist’s choice. It is cool, durable, long lasting, lint free and expensive.
The most fabulous thing about it is: It gets softer with every wash.
Linen covers are created from Organic Flax and are available in both the stiffer French style and the crumply lived-in version. Used as a fill for quilts, cotton is far warmer and more breathable than petroleum-based polyester.
Kapok is a silky cotton like fiber from seedpods of the Kapok tree, also known as Ceiba tree or Silk Cotton Tree. It is a superb insulator, as good as down matching the feel while fending off dust mites. Because it is such a fragile fiber it can not be spun and is only used for filling.
Kapok is 8 times lighter than cotton, exstremely fluffy, non-allergic, non-toxic, resistant to rot, odorless and a great thermal-insulator. Because of its buoyancy, it can support as much as 30 times its own weight in water. Ideal for stuffing life preservers and other water safety equipment.
This is a great option for those who enjoy down filled pillows and comforters without the allergies.
Here are two websites to help you find this unique product.
NaturallyGood and Gaiam
For those of you living in San Diego, California: you can see one of these trees in El Cajon growing right next to the mall.
ALPACA
Alpaca fibers are among the softest and luxurious of all animal fibers. Alpaca fiber is warmer than sheep’s wool and lighter in weight and does not have the itchiness associated with many animal fibers. It has an incredibly soft, supple touch and a wonderful fineness which crafters desire. The fiber is semi-hollow, making it very lightweight while possessing a thermal warmth unlike other natural fibers.
It is a specialty fiber, being both rare and extremely fine. Organic, hypo-allergenic, and naturally flame retardant, additional alpaca performance characteristics include: stretch, water repellency, and odor reduction.
Alpaca fleece does not contain lanolin (which makes it hypoallergenic) and do not have guard hairs, making cleaning and processing very simple and enjoyable. While alpacas boast 22 natural colors – more than any other fiber-producing animal – their fiber retains its luster even when dyed with non-chemical dyes. Alpaca products are a luxurious pleasure both to the eye and to the touch.
Kind of a funny picture, huh? Now that I have your attention…….
The Alpaca wool comforters and duvets are each filled with 100% natural, organically grown alpaca wool fiber blended with some sheep’s wool for more loft. The duvets are then covered using 100% cotton fabric with a 260 thread count. The animals are raised in a pesticide, herbicide and stress free environment and their wool is a renewable resource. No chemicals, dyes or bleaches are used when the wool is processed. At the end of its long life, the whole product is 100% biodegradable. Wool comforters are washable and available in twin, double, queen and king sizes. Available at: Gaiam and Naturally Good
TUSSAH SILK
Dense, light tussah and dupiono silk fibers give all the warmth of wool at a fraction of the weight.
Tussah silk comes from silkworms allowed to emerge from cocoons naturally, unlike traditional silk production, which requires killing the worms to harvest the threads.
A wonderful website for these products is: Anna Sova Silk Dupioni Quilts
WOOL
Wrap yourself in wool….The “All Seasons Comforter” is filled with Sonoma County “Pure Grow” wool and covered with soft unbleached natural organic cotton muslin. Wool is the perfect insulating material for a comforter. Air trapped between fibers provides great warmth in winter. Wool warms up to you almost the moment you lay down, responding to your body temperature. Wool also keeps you comfortably insulated and cool in summer. Bedouin tribes in the desert wear wool clothing for this very reason. Wool is comfortable in any season. The “All Seasons Comforter” regulates temperature by wicking moisture away from your body. Porous and permeable, wool absorbs perspiration and releases it slowly through evaporation so that in winter you feel less chilled and in summer you are comfortably cooled. You will not wake up overheated or too cold in the middle of the night.
Another site: Rawganique
LYOCELL
Winner of multiple awards – Best New Product – New York Home Textile Show, European Environment Award, among others! The award was explained by the fact that the product selected goes to great lengths to treat the environment with care since the manufacturing process for a blanket of 100% Lenzing Lyocell® is environmentally friendly and the product itself is all natural. Easy to care for.
Lyocell products are designed for the consumer who chooses not to use a down filled comforter.
Lyocell offers a high quality alternative without stooping to low end products such as polyester filled comforters.
Lyocell is a pure natural fiber extracted from wood in an environmentally friendly process and sets new luxury standards of quality in all natural comforters.
The natural Lyocell fill is soft, fleecy, warm and the perfect weight for a cold winter’s night. Sumptuous Silk Charmeuse is the feeling of the Lyocell covering.
Lyocell is the newest pure natural fiber, made from wood cellulose. Lyocell is eco-friendly, 100% biodegradable.
Lyocell Jade is perfect for year round use and is hypoallergenic.
This comforter can be machine washed. Filled in and imported from Austria.
CASHMERE
Cashmere hair comes from the long-haired Cashmere goat which lives on elevations of up to 16,500 feet. Habitat: Himalaya.
The fine downy hair is shed naturally once a year. Collected by hand, it then undergoes the expensive mechanical process of detangling.
Cashmere is one of the most precious natural hairs due to its extraordinary ability to provide an enormous amount of heat retention without heavy weight and bulk.
Cashmere hair can absorb 30% more moisture than its net weight.
It has very soft all natural hairs and provides the best comfort and heat retention. Excellent for year round use.
The Cashmere Filled Comforter’s tick is 100% fiber-proof Natural Cotton produced without dyes or chemicals.
You do not feel the Cashmere against your body, as the cotton outer shell protects this valuable natural filling.
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“That is the end of my blogging for today, hope to see you tomorrow“.
There are a lot of down comforters out there, many without any real information for the consumer to make an educated purchase.
But in this page i got more information about comforter. Thanks for the info.