Two hours after my two year old messed the bed and slept on it, we pulled off the wet sheet and puddle pad to reveal a completely dry mattress. Success!

 

While a slab of latex can easily be cut into any shape, the price of shredded latex can be more affordable and in the case of couch pillows, perhaps more practical.  We made for this customer 6 bouncy, overstuffed pillows for his couch. Our GOTS twill is the inner case; they are slipped into an outer case to match the sofa.

“They turned out perfectly.  They have a really substantial feel/look to them and they’ll last a long time.”

Look at this completely DIY wool mattress made out of our Wool Flake. 75 lbs. went into this full sized mattress. Only 20 tufts to batten the wool down, but note the French mattress edging to finish the mattress.

Soon we will post a complete kits with needles and a pattern, but for now, feel free to contact us if you would like instructions or ideas.

Using some wool batting leftover from a pillow making, we sewed up a doll’s pillow and a quilt for the doll. We rolled the batting up just like we did for our bed size pillow and sewed it shut.  The quilt was stitched with just one layer of the 3 lb. batts, thin enough to not require any special sewing equipment on my sewing machine. Do I need to say that the fabrics were chosen by my daughter.

LOVE the window seat!! looks great! very professional and comfortable… – Rancho Santa Fe, CA

 

Made with our needle felted wool and some binding, these slippers are warm and smooth. As the wool was washed and lanolized before sewing, these slippers are washable and soft.

After designing and building her house just right, this customer added one of the last custom touches: a natural latex couch whose cushions can be arranged into a perfectly sized Full size mattress with pillow.

She chose 4″ of Firm Natural Latex, wrapped in wool batting. The pillow is the small back piece in the pictures and is made of a Soft piece of Natural Latex. All of the cases are wrapped in prewashed zippered cases made with our GOTS Organic Twill fabric. The back cushion and the pillow are also wrapped in prewashed zippered cases made from a decorative fabric of the customer’s choosing.

When the cushions are laid side by side in a line, the couch turns into a full sized mattress, perfect for a guest yet tucked away when not needed.

 

Finally got the bed out. It’s very very comfy!!  – Seattle, WA

 

Wool is lofty and soft. It can be an heirloom fiber when it is kept lofty and recarded every few years. To provide access to the wool in the future without have to tear open a seam and sew it shut again, the customer requested a zipper put in. The topper is hand tufted. You could make one of your own.

Using this vintage yellow fabric the customer picked out, we sewed six chair cushions. They are stuffed with shredded natural latex and hand tufted to keep the fill from flopping and falling to one side of the cushion like shredded latex is prone to do. In case the fill was want to be adjusted, a zipper was added to the back of each cushion.

Using shredded natural latex and kapok fiber, this Etsy customer makes custom dog beds. Like our pillows, she creates a liner with the fill and uses a strong hemp canvas fabric for the outer, washable case.

The kapok softens the shredded latex and absorbs some of its bounce while still being flexible and comfortable. You can view her shop at DebBedsOrganics.

Walking past our table at the New Hope Farmers Market, Peggy noticed the variety of pillows and thought of her own pillow troubles. She had been on the hunt for years for a pillow that was supportive under her neck and softer under her head. After discussing for quite a while what she might like, we designed this pillow case for her.

You can see each channel is filled with its own fill. Wool in the bottom followed by kapok in the middle and wool again on the top. Each channel has its own zipper inside the pillowcase to allow for easy adjusting of the fill amount. The pillow also has depth to it through the means of gussets along the sides, to keep the fill from narrowing as it reaches the edges.

We’re looking forward to hearing how it sleeps. I hope it is just the thing.

If you can layer a mattress with different firmnesses, how about layering your pillow? Then you can choose what combination of fills you like yet keeping them separate so that you can flip it and sleep on the same pillow but with a different feel.

A customer asked for a pillow case with a divider down the middle so she could put buckwheat hulls on one side and millet hulls on the other side. The two zippers separate the pockets from each other. The zipper pull hides in its own pocket to prevent it from snagging and magically unzipping and spilling hulls all over.  (Rutherford, New Jersey)

 

Here are the pics of the process of putting the bed together.

I used welded wire hardware cloth to lay over the Bedder Bed Frame to keep the foam from pressing thru the openings in the bed frame over time.  The steel bed frame maker said this would not happen, but I did not trust it, so I devised this solution, which I know will prevent it.  We picked up two 10 ft. x 3 ft. rolls of hardware cloth with 1/2″ square holes (small animal caging) at our local Orcheln Farm and Home for about $12 each. After trimming the hardware cloth to fit the bed frame and securing with cable ties, the two frame sides slipped right into the wooden bed frame opening where the slats were.  The whole assembly is rock solid.  No problems there.

I expected the mattresses to be real trouble hefting around, but they were not bad at all to move and nudge into place.  We loaded them onto the wire frame before removing the plastic bags they were in.  So they were in partial position right from the start of being opened.

The ticking was a bit of a challenge, getting it zipped up, but going a little at a time and with the two of us, we got the mattresses into it.  The mattresses in the one pic enclosed in the ticking look a bit out of kilter, but this will smooth out over some use of the bed.  One reason is that the mattress pads appeared to come from different vendors and/or different places (foam was slightly different colors, etc.), and were not cut to precisely the same 60 x 80 dimensions.

The finished bed is very close to the height of our old bed.

We started at 10 AM, took a 1 hour break for lunch, and finished at 2 PM, including about 30 minutes for cleanup of tools, plastic wrapping, etc.

We laid down on the bed and it is very springy and comfortable.  I also did not feel like I was rolling towards the center when my wife laid on it.

So far, so good.  The first night sleep is long awaited.

UPDATE one week later:

We are getting  used to the bed, and it is a definite improvement.  The scariest thing to me about foam was that it would swallow me up and be hot.  This is why I assiduously avoided the memory foam hype.  But this bed does not do that at all.  It is very cushiony, and conforms to the body, but you do not sink deeply in it and it isn’t hot.  One thing I like is that when you sleep on your back which I sometimes do for short periods at night, it rises up to fill the small of your back and provides some support there – very comfortable.  A negative, which I will get used to, is that there isn’t much support for sitting on the side of the bed – feels like you will slide off.  The fifth mattress exaggerates that feeling as well – you can imagine it better if you contemplate the possible experience of sleeping on a stack of 100 foam mattresses!  The modified-by-me Bedder Bed steel frame is rock solid, and completely noiseless.  All in all, we are very satisfied with the whole setup.  My wife, who was skeptical of the whole thing, and especially of buying a $2,000+ mattress without trying it, even said the other day that she is beginning to like the bed and mattress setup. (Sullivan, Missouri)

 

Two Twin size mattresses made with our components: Heron’s (circa July 2014) is a 6″ Combo of Medium Latex over a Firm Latex in Quilted Ticking with a Wool Puddle Pad.  Ephie’s (circa July 2012) is 6″ Firm Natural Latex wrapped in one batt of wool encased in our Twill Cotton Ticking.

Ephie was our 5th customer ever. Thanks for coming back! (Edina, MN)

Thanks for coming to our Pillow Making Event on Sunday!

Fluffing kapok is always more enjoyable with others’ company and I was very happy to finish fluffing the last few pounds I needed for a dog bed my neighbor requested I make.

My neighbor Barbara wanted to treat her grandson’s helper dog, Sonic, so a new, fluffy dog bed it was. Twenty lbs. of kapok later, it was finished with two cases, one for washing and one for holding the fill. She specifically requested the denim fabric because he tends toward those dark colors anyway.

A custom sized twin with quilted wool to fit this lovely Russian sleigh bed – Minneapolis, MN

King size 9″ with diamonds – Hugo, MN

A six inch queen with simple wool batting and plain ticking on Ikea slats

These are the first three mattresses we made. The top two are with a cotton futon cover we found online (not available anymore), 2 batts of wool and 1.5″ of natural latex.  These are our daughters’ mattresses.  The bottom one contains 1 batt of wool, 6″ natural latex and GOTS organic twill fabric. This combination now sits in our showroom.