I worked on my wool mattress last Saturday. I was just stuffing it (and worked all day!), but got barely halfway done. I can’t imagine making wool mattresses for a living…
It’s been taking up so much room on the floor. And the wool I’m using is really dirty, so there’s dirt and wool everywhere. The apartment is going to get a thorough cleaning once I’m completely done with the mattress. There’s even wool fluff under the sofa.
Despite all the work, I’m glad I didn’t buy a commercial wool mattress. Mine is almost certainly going to be higher quality than most of those available in the US. And now I know how to make a mattress!
I made the ticking (the fabric sack that holds the mattress stuffing together) in March. I bought the materials for the ticking from DIY Natural Bedding. They have great materials- organic US-grown and -milled cotton twill, sustainable wool, sustainable latex- and lots of inspiration!
It took me a long time to gather and wash the wool for the stuffing. I could have bought new wool, but sustainable wool is pretty darn expensive and unsustainable wool is unsustainable. So I collected wool from Craigslist. There are a surprising number of people interested in spinning. A very nice person on Reddit even gave me wool from her own sheep!
But… as it turned out, I didn’t need to do any of that. Just a few months ago, someone was giving away a wool mattress for free on Craigslist (I paid $20 for home delivery). I repurposed the wool from that not-very-well made mattress. So now I have all that fancy wool left over for spinning, another craft I enjoy!
When you put wool in a mattress, you don’t actually “stuff” it- that would give you a very lumpy mattress. Instead, you are supposed to fluff the wool, then carefully layer it so that everything is even. To do this well takes a huuuuuge amount of time.
I’ll let you know how the project progresses! Feel free to ask any questions about mattresses and mattress-making. I did a lot of research before starting this project!