A study was conducted to investigate whether better textile quality and efficiency result from cleaning cotton in the gin or in the textile mill. The data were used to determine how various cleaning combinations affect fiber processing performance and ultimate textile product quality. Two similar brush-doffed, saw-wire lint cleaners were used -- one located in a ginning laboratory and the other located in a textile processing laboratory. A hairy-leaf upland cotton was well blended as seed cotton, cleaned with a standard sequence of seed cotton cleaning machinery, ginned, cleaned with zero, one, or two stages of lint cleaning, and compressed to universal bale density. The bales were then processed in a textile laboratory full-scale opening and cleaning line. At each of three production rates, the lint cleaner was bypassed, used once, or the cotton was recirculated to feed the lint cleaner twice. The cottons were then ring, rotor, and air-jet spun to determine differences in yarn properties. Processing efficiency was measured for ring spinning. Ring yarns were knitted into laboratory fabric samples. Laboratory tests were performed on samples of fiber, yarn, fabric, and processing waste. It was found that lint cleaning had similar effects on quality, regardless of whether it was applied at the gin or in the mill (i.e., before or after bale compression). In general, the best results were obtained with cotton cleaning sequences including no more than one pass of the saw-type lint cleaner, preferably located in the mill rather than the gin. Progress and results from the first phase of the study will be presented.