Cut

Organic merino wool arrives from Vermont, woven and mounted on rolls over a yard and a half wide. When asked what makes the wool organic, Notkin explains that the sheep grazed on pesticide-free grass, and they weren’t dunked in a pesticide bath. The Looolo team will cut between 20 and 50 pillows worth of rectangles at a time, unrolling the fabric atop cutting mats and slicing it by wheeling the cutter around cardboard templates. “We don’t cut huge amounts at once,” Notkin explains, “because we don’t want to end up with leftovers that won’t be used.” The tedious work is not without its pleasures. “It’s nice that this simple part of the process can also be beautiful,” Notkin says. “As we layer the sheets of cut fabric one on top of the other, they form a kind of enlarged book, with big, thick, wooly sheets.”

Prep

Zippers, buttons, and other add-ons are rendered unnecessary by Looolo’s pillowcase closure system, which uses a tried-and-true technique: overlapping flaps on the back. “Zippers and buttons are not always biodegradable, and they’re sort of an extra,” Notkin says. “We keep it minimal.” Notkin’s commitment to simplicity means forgoing some of the high-tech tools that make sewing more efficient than it once was. A serger sewing machine, for example, makes cutting and hemming a breeze, and builds an automatic barrier against unraveling thread. But its mechanistic forces usually require the strength of synthetic thread. At Looolo they use only cotton thread, which means sewing on an ordinary machine. They dye their thread only for parts of the pillows where the thread is visible and color matching requires dyeing. “Organic cotton thread is hard to find,” Notkin acknowledges. “The organic industry is still a bit slow to the punch. When you see garments claiming to be organic, they usually are, but not sewn with a thread that’s organic.”

Pattern

Notkin, who started her career making costume jewelry, has a knack for romantically contrasting hues and textures. In fact, her favorite part of the creative process comes before anything is made—“deciding what colors and textures look best together.”
“If we have a black background,” she elaborates, “does green look good on it, or does orange look better? If you put orange with black, does it look like Halloween? How thick should the band be?” In production, that thought process translates into laying out each individual pillow. It takes about 15 minutes per pillow: The machine-knit wool strips are cut into sections and arranged on a diagonal, parallel and evenly spaced across the front face. Accuracy is measured visually. The wool textures are a visible celebration of their common fiber. “It’s amazing,” Notkin exclaims. “Wool coming from one little animal can turn into so many incredible things. It can be thin, thick, tufted, or felted. I think the technical world sort of mimics the natural world, but we forget that.”

Stuff

The fronts and backs are sewn to each other inside out and then turned right side out—“we just make sure the corners are nice,” says Notkin. Each pillowcase is hand-stuffed with a Looolo-produced insert. “We couldn’t find an insert that left us able to say this is truly an organic product,” Notkin says. So they sourced a natural material cultivated in the Philippines and Indonesia, incidentally a great Scrabble word: kapok. “It comes from a tree,” Notkin explains, “and looks like big, billowy, cloudy puffs of fiber. The great thing about kapok is that it’s naturally buoyant—for years, that’s what was used in life preservers. On a technical level, the fibers are hollow. Your pillow will float.” Added value aside, the kapok makes a resilient and soft stuffing. Notkin, who prefers fuller pillows, says, “They’re not squishy, but they’re soft. When stuffed properly, kapok has a nice give to it, like a muffin coming out of the oven.”