As many people know, I have been working with and wearing linen for a long time now. We sold fabric in the haberdashery store and many of the patterns I have designed are specifically created to work well with linen fabrics.
Many years ago at a country show we stumbled across a group of people doing a heritage demonstration of how linen used to be produced. It was fascinating, and I subconsciously filed it away to be used at a future date. Then when I moved up to Warwickshire I discovered that they were not too far away from us as they were just outside Stroud in Gloucestershire.
Ann and Simon Cooper from Flaxland explore flax from seed to cloth and offer workshops in the history of flax, how to process it if you want to grow some yourself and then how to spin it into yarn. So it is a bit of a no-brainer that this was on my wish list for a while and I finally got around to booking onto a workshop this week.
Starting the Day
The studio is a little off the beaten track but was really straightforward to find. It is right next to a small river and you can still see the remains of the local wool industry in the somewhat dilapidated factory buildings further upstream. However, now the water flowing down the river is crystal clear and creates an incredibly tranquil setting to spend the day.
After a much needed coffee, and quick introductions with the others in the group. We had a hands-on session with a few stems of flax so we could get a good look at the plant the lovely linen fibres come from. In a good year - plenty of warmth, sun and water - the crop can grow about a metre in height. So they are long stems to deal with.
The first process involved in extracting the fibres involves breaking the outer stem and helps to remove the bark. You can do this by just breaking and wiggling the stems until the bark falls off and you can start to see the ribbons of fibres revealed.
We also had a play around with drop spinning and drawing off just a few fibres from a pre-prepared distaff. This was much harder than it looked - let me tell you! And it was really tricky to maintain any consistency to the spun thread.
History and backstory
After a bit of playing around with the stems and fibres we had another coffee while Simon explained some of the history of the fibre, growing conditions, and what I was most interested in - why it wasn’t grown in the UK anymore.
This was absolutely fascinating and something I want to go into in more depth with other Journal posts. It is a subject I am really very interested in as a way of trying to combat the amount of waste that is created by the fashion industry. I could mention figures that you would find completely incomprehensible and would leave you utterly staggered!
However, today was a day to just enjoy, play and learn.
The group as a whole had lots of questions to ask and discuss which took us up to lunchtime. A brief hiatus while munching lunch and some interesting conversations with others in the group, including a spinner and knitter, a retired engineer and vegan interested in ethical fabric made from plants.
Processing the Flax
Breaking
Lunch over and it was time to put some of what we had learned into practice, processing some more flax stems but using slightly more cottage industry type techniques. So the Breaking we had done earlier by hand was now achieved by using a wooden apparatus which Simon had designed and made himself using historical documents and books.
It looked a bit like a blunt guillotine and you brought the bunch of stems through the mechanism so it could crunch down on the stems crimping them in several places, breaking them more evenly and efficiently. The bark or broken stems that are removed are called Shive. This can be collected up if the machine is laid out on a sheet and then gathered up to collect the shive which can be used as straw type bedding for livestock.
The stage on from this would be to use a Roller Break. This is where the flax stems are rolled back and forth between grooved drums that will crimp and break the outer casing. This is much quicker and more efficient again.
Scutching
This involves a scraping action to try and remove as much of the Shive as possible. It is important to keep the roots ends tightly together as all the physical action can stretch out the bunch of fibres. So the aim is to hold a third of the length and work two thirds of the length. You then use a block of wood with a sharper corner and scrape down the length of the stems to remove the shive.
Alternatively, if using the larger breaking machine the flax can be held vertically up against the wooden machine and then beaten briskly with a scutching stick which looks like a thin curved paddle.
Hackling
Now most of the rubbish has been removed from the flax stems, they can be combed through to separate the fibres and remove the shorter ones. At least half the fibres will be combed out, but can still be used. The shorter fibres are called Tow and can be carded and spun in the same way as wool.
If you’ve heard the expression Tow Rope before this is where it originated. A Tow Rope was actually made from the Tow fibres created during flax processes that were spun into yarn and then twisted together to create rope.
This was actually a lovely calm and therapeutic process and involves a real knack. Holding the lower third, the fibres were flicked over and gently pulled through a series of large medium and smaller combs. These gradually separated and reduced the bunch to just the beautifully soft and silky fibres and could be spun into a thread. These are called Stricks and looked surprisingly like my husband's beard!
Apparently after Hackling between 30% and 50% of the fibres become Stricks and the rest is Tow.
You can watch a brief video of how it all works by clicking on the image.
Distaff Preparation.
Now we had the lovely soft and silky Stricks to be spun. But they needed to be prepared and the fibres held in such a way that small numbers of the fibres could be pulled out and spun using a drop spindle or spinning wheel. The distaff is usually cone shaped and can be a card/paper cone or wooden frame. Both work just as well.
We laid the Stricks out on the bench and gently pulled them apart so the fibres created a vertical lattice. This was then wrapped around the distaff creating a kind of vertical cobweb and was secured by a long length of ribbon that is laced around the cone shape and tied in a bow at the bottom. This holds the fibres in place and allows them to be drawn out and spun.
Click on the image to watch the video.
So we were back to where we started with the basic spinning.
As someone who also runs workshops, I really appreciated the structure of the day and how it cleverly worked through its own process from the starting point, understanding the history and practical hands-on playing/working, then bringing you back to the initial starting position with the flax fibres and the prepared distaff.
I had a wonderfully enjoyable day and learnt a huge amount. But it also left me with an enormous range of questions. Some of which I hope will be answered through my work on the MA in Sustainable Textiles I am just about to embark upon.
But more of that in other journal posts!
If you're curious about linen and flax growing and processing I would thoroughly recommend one of the workshops Simon and Ann run at Flaxland. Their website is fascinating and they are involved in a huge range of areas. So please go and look them up.
Jules x