Modifying fruit distribution through varying plant density may impact cotton fiber quality. This study was conducted to determine how fiber quality of cotton may be manipulated through plant density and fruiting position. Two cotton cultivars were over seeded and hand thinned to 3.6, 9.0, 12.6 and 21.5 plants m-2 at two University of Georgia experiment stations in 2001 and 2002. Immediately prior to machine harvest, plants from 6 m of one of the center rows was removed from each plot and hand harvested by fruiting position. After hand harvest, seed cotton from each fruiting position was ginned separate and delivered to Cotton Incorporated (Cary, NC) for fiber quality analysis. Much of the data collected in this investigation suggest two recurring patterns with respect to fiber quality and fruiting position. First, the superior fruiting positions in terms of overall fiber quality (i.e. longer, more uniform and mature fibers) occur at first sympodial positions generally in the mid-canopy region (i.e. main stem nodes 10 to 17), also known as inner fruiting positions. The second recurring pattern in this investigation suggests the lower plant densities actually resulted in more desirable fiber properties at these inner fruiting positions. These data suggest increasing the source-to-sink ratio during boll filling could result in improved fiber properties.