How to Tuft a Wool Mattress or Topper

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Tufting is a simple and useful addition to your wool mattress or topper or comforter.  The tufts help keep the wool from shifting inside the ticking and help you control the firmness of your mattress.  The technique is no more than down and up and a double knot.  The above slide show should help clarify.

CLARIFICATION

This technique is not necessary when wrapping a sheet or two of wool batting around natural latex. The latex will grip the wool all on its own. It is great for loose fibers that would want to shift inside their cases, such as wool flake, kapok fiber, shredded latex, and wool batting.

TO CONSIDER
  1. Allow 12″ of twine per tuft as having enough of a tail is essential to easy needling. Do not snip twine to 12″ lengths before tufting, leave the string long.
  2. Distance your tufts 12″ apart for a wool comforter or topper and 6″ apart for a wool mattress.  The thick depth of mattress can create drastic valleys when tufted.  To avoid the valleys, keeps your tufts relatively close together and follow Consideration #3.
  3. Keep in mind that the tighter you pull the knots, the deeper a valley and the firmer a mattress you are making.  With a wool mattress, deep valleys mean that you will need to smooth it over with a wool topper. Alternatively, if you tufts are only 50% tight, the hills and valleys will be moderate and generally tolerable.
  4. If tufting a large mattress, such as a King or Queen, consider putting it on top of 1 x 4’s supported by saw horses so that you can crawl underneath to grab your needle and send it back up. Otherwise you will be constantly lifting 50 lbs+ of mattress every tuft you make.
  5. It is important to make sure all your wool is evenly spaced out. If you find that it is not evenly flat after tufting, unzip the ticking and either using your hand or a grabber like those trash picker uppers, grab wool flake from spots where it shouldn’t be and move it to a new spot.
TO PURCHASE

Our toppers and comforters have been machine tufted with circular stitches, so this technique will not be evident on them.

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