Erik:
Never tried cotton, but did make a few pairs of BARE (open air) solid core silver wire interconnects years ago.
Even though the electronics were contained in a closed closet located behind the living room speaker wall the stress of "something" going wrong was too much for me so I went back to my basic 47 labs cables.
I used cotton ribbon slings anchored with push pins to support/separate the 2 wires per channel and the SQ was INCREDIBLE.
Used 26 and 30 gauge wire, but forget which one I favored.
Also experimented with large diameter lab tubing (difficult to route/control) and oversized clear Teflon tubing, but cheaped out on the HUGE Teflon tubing due to the expense.
The BARE versions were clearly better, but being outside the listeneing room they didn't require the dampening that inside room cables may benefit from (sonething to consider).
If you don't have pets maybe experiment with BARE solid core silver interconnects if you have any silver wire on hand?
Didn't have enough silver wire to try the oversized tubing on speaker cable.
I used 47 Labs non-metal RCA's for both pairs of the nude interconnects, which may have made a difference.
DeKay
