Feather Beds

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Can anyone tell me how much ticking it takes to make a twin-sized feather bed? How many geese/ducks to pick to fill one? Have a dozen geese and a dozen ducks a present for picking. Also, how do you clean a feather bed? The only way I know is to set the mattress outdoors in the sunshine and give it a good wacking. ----thanks, Kathleen

-- Kathleen Tikkanen (kalfy53@hotmail.com), September 22, 1999

Answers

I have an old feather bed made by my great-grandmother. If you can find ticking that is 44" wide, you should need ticking twice as long as you want it to be, plus about 4" for the turning in and sewing up on one narrow end. You need a lot of feathers to make a feather bed. What people used to do is pick the birds when they got ready and put the feathers in the ticking and sew it up. When it got full enough, they began to use it and just kept adding feathers to it until they got it as full as they wanted. Sunning and wacking are the time honored ways of cleaning such a bed. If it wasn't too full, you could put it into a commercial dryer on low for a few minutes occassionally to fluff and dry out the feathers. I live in Northeast Texas and the humidity here is a killer, and the feathers get packed and heavy even it they are on an unused bed. The dryer helps if you don't have the time or appropriate weather for sunning.

-- A.C. Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), October 21, 1999.

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