Straw Mattresses

So the rope beds are very comfy, but only if you have a mattress. Somehow, I don't think I'll be taking the mattresses off of Haley's bed to go camping with. Also it's more than a little pathetic to go to all the trouble of making a medieval bed and then stick a modern mattress on top! So I needed to make medieval mattresses. Of course, there are always feather beds, but that's a bit outside my price range. Instead, I decided on straw mattresses.

I ordered my fabric from PeriodFabric.com. I used their neutral cotton duck cloth which is a very heavy duty 60 inch wide fabric. To make 2 twin sized mattresses, I ordered 11 yards. (Less than $40!) When it arrived, I washed it on hot and dried it on hot, so that I'd be able to wash it later without worrying about it shrinking.

Then I set it aside and worked on my procrastination skills for a week or two. Fast forward to Spring Break. I'd like to go camping this week, but in order to do that I'm going to have to pounce on any break in the rainy weather, which means I'd better get my camping gear ready to go! This morning I looked at the weather forecast, and although it was nice out today, this was going to be the last nice day until Thursday at least. (I might not get to go camping this week). I knew I needed nice weather for this project, so I hooked up my trailer and went over to the feed store to buy some straw. Less that $16 for 2 large (3 string) bales of straw!

I spread about half a bale of straw out on a tarp in the sun, and sprayed it with some essential oils* in rubbing alcohol. I'm hoping the smell will deter any bugs that might otherwise set up housekeeping in my new mattresses. The straw looked clean and smelled nice :) It was sunny and breezy, so I stirred and sprayed periodically while I worked on sewing the mattresses. We laid the fabric out on the ground and cut it outside.

We used a carpenter's chalk line to snap a nice straight cutting line for me to follow. It worked great -- I wish all my sewing projects had straight lines so I could use it all the time :)

My friend recommended that I use upholstery thread. Dang, I could use that stuff as fishing line! My seams are going nowhere! It was a pain to get set up though; the darn thread keep trying to unroll itself from my bobbin as I was winding it!

Once the mattresses were sewn, we started stuffing them with straw. We filled them as full as they would go, picking them up and shaking the straw to the bottom as we went, so that they looked more like beanbags than like mattresses. The straw compressed very quickly though, so that they looked like mattresses again. In fact, I may need to top them off with more straw in a couple of days.

The verdict: A success! I got a prickly straw rash from filling the mattresses, but the straw doesn't poke through once inside. They are very comfortable and the essential oils smell nice :) I'll probably want to fluff the mattress every day or two to even it out, but I'm looking forward to spending the night on my new bed :)


* My recipe was 1 cup of rubbing alcohol to 5 drops each of lavender, citronella, cedarwood, rosemary, eucalyptus, and peppermint, mixed up in a big spray bottle.

I've written up walkthroughs for anyone interested in making their own rope bed or straw mattress.

Rope Beds: Take 2

I decided on a few alterations of my bed plan. The benefit was that I could use (with only slight altertions) the same parts I had already purchased. Since I'm a teacher, I used my connections to get in touch with the high school shop teacher. He agreed to let me come over and work on my bed parts there. It took a while to find a day that worked for both of us, but I finally made it over.

First, I've gotta say WOW. How did I not know about shop class when I was in high school??? So many tools, nice layout, powerful drill press. I should have taken photos but I was busy drilling. Oh yeah. I have a serious crush on that drill press. My friend's drill press stalled out if the bit grabbed too much material, so I was producing a lot of sawdust as I slowly drilled my holes. THIS drill press CHEWED through the wood, producing chunky shavings and drilling deep holes in about 60 seconds!!! Yummy.

Anyhow, my original bed plan had the poles going into my 4x4 legs on the same level. The problem with that is that a 4x4 is really only 3.5x3.5. If you draw a little picture, you'll see that if you're drilling 2 inch wide holes, there's only enough room for the holes to be 1 inch deep (even drilling wide of center). So the poles weren't set very deeply into the legs, which contributed to the wobbliness. Also, since the poles were all on the same plane, that allowed the bed to wiggle a lot. Lastly, I'd overestimated how tall I wanted the beds. The extra height was unnecessary and adding to the problem. My solution: cut off 6 inches from the tops of my leg posts (thus removing my old holes) and redrill holes which vertically offset the head/foot and side poles. That way I could drill much deeper holes without worrying about them running into each other. I decided to lower the head and foot, because in the old design the head and foot ended up much higher than the middle due to sag. I figured this would help counteract that, since there was a limited amount of sag the higher sides would allow. (Important to me since I like to sleep on my tummy and there's a limit to how much my back likes to bend that way!)

So the shop teacher used his chop saw to shorten my 4x4s and I got to drill lots of holes :) You know what? It worked!!! My beds are now much sturdier, and don't have that annoying high head & foot feeling. The legs tend to spay out just a little, which is a good thing as far as stability is concerned, though it does look a little sloppy ;)









I've written up walkthroughs for anyone interested in making their own rope bed or straw mattress.

Rope Beds: Take 1

Today Dad and Andrea came up for a visit, so I got them to help me with the final stages of my rope beds. The beds are made out of 4x4s for the legs and 2 inch thick poles for the head, foot, and sides. All this is held together by a whole bunch of rope woven like a basket or hammock. I'd already drilled the holes in my legs in a friend's garage (Yay for friends who own a drill press! Thanks Thorkil!) but I needed some help with the rope. I had a diagram I'd made to follow for the weaving, but it really looked like a 2 person job.

Last night I dragged Andrea out to the garage and we wove a bed together. The design involves weaving to the head and sides but not to the foot. Instead a thick dowel is laid across the bed about 8 inches above the foot, and the rope weaves to that. Then that dowel is lashed to the foot pole, and that rope can be tightened as the ropes stretch and the bed begins to sag. This genius design is courtesy of Cariadoc, who even has a period drawing that shows a bed designed in such a way!


We stole one of Haley's mattresses off her bunk bed and put it on the rope bed to try it out. Pretty darn comfy! Too bad the bed itself was so wobbly! Haley elected to spend the night in the garage, on the rope bed and slept very well.


In the morning, while Andrea and Haley went shopping, Dad and I went into project mode, and I got him to help me rope the second bed. We did a much better job (outside in the daylight) and the ropes actually ended up meeting back together in the end, which hadn't happened with the other bed. So I talked him into reroping the first bed with me too. They looked fantastic!



Unfortunately, they were wobbly enough that while I thought Haley was probably ok, I didn't feel comfortable sleeping on it -- if I jerked suddenly in a dream the legs might collapse!

I knew I needed to alter my design, but how?