Originally Posted by Prism99

Cotton is not safe for a child's nightgown because air can reach the fabric simultaneously from both sides. If you touch a lit match to the bottom of a nightgown, it will engulf the child's body and set hair on fire within seconds -- too fast for anyone to react before the child has 3rd degree burns.

Cotton fabric and batting is perfectly safe for quilts. Quilts are thick enough so that air cannot reach all surfaces simultaneously. If a lit match is touched to a quilt, the quilt will not combust the way a nightgown would. Even if there is enough air to feed a fire in the quilt, the quilt will burn very slowly compared to the nightgown.

I once saw a demonstration on TV where they used a mannequin to show what happens to an untreated cotton nightgown, and why. The same would be true of loose pajamas, or non-flame retardant curtains. The thinner the curtains, the more quickly they will go up in flames. Thick curtains will burn more slowly.

Polyester is not necessarily better than untreated cotton because it melts. The droplets are sticky, like syrup, and can cause very deep burns quickly. At least cotton burns down quickly to an ash that can be brushed off the skin. The problem with cotton and fire occurs when the cotton is thin and therefore exposed to abundant air to feed a flame.

Incidentally, 100% cotton that has not been treated with flame retardant *can* be legally sold in the form of children's sleepwear as long as the cotton is form-fitting to the body (like long johns). A nightgown or loose jammies made from this fabric cannot be legally sold for children's sleepwear.