Covering the World of Cotton and Cotton Gloves

Long before there were work gloves made with DuPont™ Kevlar®, HPPE, nylon, or nitrile, only two primary materials were used to cover and protect a worker’s hands: leather and cotton. That was it; workers had only two options to consider. When you look at our glove lineup today, it’s hard to imagine selecting from only two, as now there are thousands of different SKUs featuring a multitude of materials.

New high-performance materials have replaced many cotton gloves workers once wore, primarily due to better cut-resistant properties. However, cotton gloves still serve as vital protection for many modern workers, and for a good reason. One benefit is the fact that cotton remains a low-cost option. Cotton also provides some inherent qualities, like heat-resistance, that make it ideal for workers concerned about burn injuries.

Cotton material has been a go-to material for centuries and has a long legacy of use in everything from clothing to canvas to cording. The material is used to manufacture absorbent towels, durable clothing, and comfortable bed linen. Elements of the cotton plant are also found in less commonly considered places like coffee filters and food products.

In this article, we will highlight the benefits of cotton, especially within work gloves.  We will also share with you some of the best cotton gloves we offer.

The Benefits of Cotton

What makes cotton ideal for use in clothing? The number one benefit of cotton is its versatility. Cotton fibers can easily be blended with other fibers, such as polyester, to create various materials offering different benefits. Cotton is also exceptionally comfortable and highly durable due to the cotton plant’s strong cellular structure. These qualities make it the ideal material for daily clothing.

Here are some of the many reasons cotton is a preferred clothing material:

• Breathable
• Easily made into different weights
• Effortlessly dyed
• Environmentally friendly
• Inexpensive compared to other fibers
• Highly durable
• Lightweight
• Retains colors
• Soft to the touch

Many of these benefits are what make cotton an ideal material for manufacturing work gloves.

Cotton is truly one of the best materials to make personal protective gloves. No artificial material has the genuine feel that cotton offers. Plus, it is highly advantageous in work settings where heat protection is necessary. When you look at some of the heat-level scores from our ITC lab, cotton canvas and terrycloth styles are rated level 5.

Here are some of the numerous advantages offered by cotton gloves:

• Affordable source of personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Absorb perspiration
• Keep hands clean, especially from dirt
• Easily laundered
• Protect against abrasion injuries
• Prevent sweat when used as a liner
• Lower the carbon footprint
• Protect delicate products by preventing fingerprints and skin oils from touching them
• Soft feel ensures all-day comfort
• The breathability of cotton keeps hands cool during hot summer months

We mentioned breathability above as one of the benefits of cotton. Keep in mind that cotton gloves keep your hands cool when it’s hot outside, but also keep your hands warm when it’s cold outside. This multi-function protection makes these gloves perfect for those who work outdoors in all weather conditions.

ng a cotton glove involves many steps before a final glove is shipped out ready to wear:

1. Cotton crops must be planted in hot, dry areas and eventually harvested.
2. Fibers are separated from the plant and sent to yarn manufacturers, where raw cotton is spun into thread or turned into woven fabric.
3. Cotton material makes its way to a manufacturing facility for glove production and is made into gloves in one of two ways: cut-n-sewn or knitted. 

• Cut-n-sewn styles, such as cotton jersey gloves, use fabric components sewn together on a sewing machine. This method is mainly used to create highly customized, multi-functional, fashionable-looking gloves.Cut-n-sewn cotton glove
• Seamless knitted styles, are made from manufactured cotton yarn by machines, as shown above. One advantage to this style is that there are no seams, making them more comfortable and form-fitting. Having no seams also ensures the gloves are less prone to tearing or separating.

MCR Safety Manufacturing

MCR Safety has been knitting cotton gloves in directly-owned manufacturing facilities since 1987. Today, instead of using virgin cotton fibers, we regenerate cotton yarn at our manufacturing facility in Puebla, Mexico. We do this by utilizing leftover materials from the fashion industry, allowing us to create cotton string knit gloves through an environmentally-friendly manufacturing process. Most glove companies receive cotton yarn spools for glove production, which can drain natural resources. At MCR Safety, we recycle and repurpose cotton fibers by transforming items like cotton shirts into spun yarn. Think of it this way, instead of transforming raw cotton material into spun yarn, we’re taking current cotton products and converting them into a completely different product – cotton work gloves.

 

 

Spools of cotton yarn found at MCR Safety’s knitting factory.

Our fully-integrated operation enables us to maintain low cotton string knit prices, even when cotton material costs may be increasing overall. From Puebla, we send the freshly spun cotton thread to our manufacturing facility in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where over 1,000 knitting machines produce 3.7 million pairs of work gloves every month.

For those curious individuals out there, it takes 2 ½ minutes for a machine to knit one glove.

---