More Than A Towel: Uses of Cotton in Camp

We are back again this week still talking about our cotton material. One thing I mentioned a lot last week that we will be talking about today are the uses of your cotton material around your camp. Real quick, there are a few things you want to be sure that your cotton material can do such as protecting the back of your neck from the sun, protecting your face from the element, or wearing it like a typical bandanna in case you did not have a hat to protect the top of your head.

Of course these tasks are easy to accomplish with a regular bandanna, so now let's see what we can accomplish with the flour sack towel. It is definitely big enough to wear as a mask and it's bigger than the bandanna so I can actually pull it up over my nose more and tuck it under my chin. With that being said I can pull it up and use it as a bandanna on my head and tie it around my neck to protect it from the sun. Another plus with the flour sack towel is that it is light colored which means it will reflect the sun and not draw it in.


Now when it comes to our last item, we run into the problem that it is just too big. So to even begin to be able to use it as a mask I have to fold it over and over and over. Even afterward, it's just too big and bulky. For that reason I am not even going to try to use it as a bandanna or wear it around my neck. It's just too big.



The next thing I like to do is to try and clean with my cotton material. What I have with me is an old tray and I am first going to try and clean it with the bandanna. I'm not going to use soap, just dip it in a bit of water and use a little bit of elbow grease and the spot I was scrubbing comes away clean. Using the flour sack towel the first thing I notice is that it absorbs water much better than the bandanna. That makes sense to me since that is what it's intended to do. Much like the bandanna it does a fine job cleaning, but it does come away much dirtier than the bandanna did. The large piece of material absorbed much like the bandanna did and still got the job done. The only difference is I have way more clean material to work with after the fact. Having the flour sack towel get dirty was probably the biggest down side, however if you don't mind your cotton material being discolored it doesn't matter anyway.

The next thing I need the cotton material to be able to do is to make a sling. Now with the bandanna it is a smaller piece of fabric so I will need two of them to create a sling. The first thing I need to do is create a triangle with one bandanna and fold two corners of the triangle together and tie them off. Then, I will create a triangle with the second bandanna, place it around my neck, and tie the two corners  around the knot of the other bandanna, and slide my arm through. The problem with this is that it is difficult to adjust, but it will work in a pinch.

Next we will try the large bandanna material. The easiest way to do this after getting a triangle shape is to tie an open loop in one end, one that will tighten as you pull on it, feed the other end through the loop and then place your head and arm into the sling. To adjust it, all you would need to do is pull on the loose end that is through the loop and tie it off where it is the most comfortable. Now we have mentioned before that this is such a bulky piece of material so I am really excited to see how the flour sack towel does.

So for the flour sack towel I am going to fold it into a triangle, and tie two corners of the triangle together into a sturdy knot. I now just have to place my arm in and put it around my neck. It's a little tight around my neck and there is no real way to adjust it, but I don't have to have more than one like with the bandannas and it is not as bulky as the big piece of fabric. It's a solid in between and experiments like this are what make me grow even more fond of these towels.

Guys I've only shown you three simple and easy ways you can use these around your camp, but there are so many more uses like carrying things and using it as spare patching material for sewing. Really there are countless other ways you can apply it. Leave me a comment and let me know what you use your cotton material for or whether you carry cotton material or not and why. Next week we will still be working with cotton but we are going to see what it can do to help us purify our water and  you know you don't want to miss it! As always feel free to comment by clicking the comment link at the end of the blog, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.