Linen

I have been into linen for awhile now. Weavers have been using linen fiber for thousands of years, but recently the fashion industry has rediscovered it. Clothing made from linen or linen blends is currently for sale everywhere.

Linen is made from the flax plant, and is one of the oldest fibers used for spinning yarn and making fabric. 10,000 year old (approximately) fragments of woven linen textiles have been discovered in West Asia and Mesopotania according to Wikipedia and other sources.

We have “linen closets” and call textiles for our home “linens” because in history they were made primarily out of linen. Knowing how much work it would be to grow flax, process it for spinning, spin linen thread, weave it into fabric, and produce a final product is mind boggling. Until the industrial age in the mid 1800’s all the spinning and weaving and sewing would have been completed by hand. No wonder average people did not have very many clothes.

I have two pairs of 13 year old 100% linen wide leg crop leg pants that I love. They are sooo comfortable, can be dressed up or down, and work for both hot days or cool days. Early this summer while shopping at TJ Maxx for something to wear to my daughter-in-laws baby shower I found a new pair in exactly the same style as the pairs I already had, but in a fun fresh tangerine color. I bought them but ended up wearing something else to the shower. I don’t really need three pairs of linen pants, but they will probably last for another 13 years.

I have been exploring linen yarn for weaving. I wove a couple of things using Duet cotton/linen blend yarn from Gist. I love how it feels and drapes.

Examples of things I wove with the Duet yarn are pictured below. One of my favorite weaving projects ever is the red and white zig zag jar cover I made for my daughter, using plain cotton for the warp and the red Duet for the weft. The blue towel on the right was made with two colors of blue Duet, using a free pattern for the Rigid Heddle loom from Gist (Running Stitch Towels) that said to use 12 ends per inch. It is very loose. If I ever make another towel with this yarn for both the warp and weft I will try using 16 ends per inch on the floor loom for a slightly more dense fabric.

Following are photos of another cotton/linen blend weaving yarn called Cottolin. It is thinner than the Duet, and has a larger percentage of cotton. My next project on the floor loom will be towels using this yarn.

I bought some flax for spinning into linen at the Shepherd’s Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival. I thought it would be interesting to try spinning that, and using it in a woven dishtowel.

The flax looks like course hair, as you can see in the photo below. People do use it for doll hair.

I looked up instructions online for spinning the flax fiber. The traditional method involves using a distaff, a sort of pole attached to a spinning wheel that holds the fiber and keeps it organized. You often see these on antique spinning wheels. I do not have a distaff and did not want to buy one. Some sources had tips including getting your fingers wet as you spin, and laying the fiber out on a cloth on your lap. I tried both of these with some success. I found that if I tried working with too much at once it got very tangled up as shown in the following photo.

As long as I held a small amount at a time I was able to spin the fiber the same way I spin wool, except that the fibers are a lot longer and there is zero elasticity. I successfully spun part of a bobbin of usable linen yarn.

Attempting to spin flax was a good experience but I did not enjoy it enough to want to spin the entire 100 grams in the package I had bought. I might bring the rest to fall Fiber Day and see if someone there wants to give it a try. Given my limited amount of time for spinning, I would rather spin other fibers I have in my stash.

It was a lot easier to buy spools of natural colored linen yarn online, pictured below. Comparing the price of the flax fiber to the commercial linen yarn after the fact is enlightening. I paid $18 for the 3.5 ounce bag of flax fiber, which then requires many hours of work to spin it into linen yarn. The 8.8 ounce cones of Undyed Wetspun Warp Linen I bought were also $18 but they are ready to go, I do not have the spend hours spinning first. And now I see they are on currently sale for $12.59!!

At spring Fiber Day I was able to dye some of the commercial natural colored linen yarn using supplies provided for dying plant fibers. First I had to unwind the yarn from the cone and make it into skeins using my niddy noddy.

Following are photos of jars of Dharma Fiber Reactive Dye at Fiber Day. This dye can be used on natural fibers including cotton, rayon, hemp, linen, silk, wood, cane, and rattan. A different type of dye is used for wool and other animal (protein) fibers.

The first step was to soak the yarn in water with soda ash, which helps the dye to absorb better. After that the yarn was immersed in jars of water with the dye. This step required a minimum of three hours but I left the yarn in the dye bath until the next morning back at our house.

The colors were very intense when I took the yarn out of the jars. I used tons of water washing it with synthrapol (to set the dye) and then rinsing it out. A lot of dye came out during the rinse process, but plenty of color was still left after the water ran clear. I love the way it turned out. I still have some of the natural yarn left undyed, so I might dye more at the next Fiber Day at the end of September.

My head is full of ideas for weaving, spinning and knitting projects. I am looking forward to weaving dish towels using all the different linen and cotton/linen yarns I have collected, when I can get to it.