Growing flax for linen

In 2020, I grew my first crop of flax up at the Cook County Community Garden in Grand Marais. Flax is the fiber used to make linen yarn. Flax is a bast fiber, which means that its fibers come from the inner bark of the plant. Other bast fibers include...

Okay, here is a report on further progress in my growing flax for linen experiment. As previously posted, I grew some flax this past summer in order to see if I could turn it into spinnable fiber, and then into linen. Previous posts: growing the flax, harvesting the flax, retting the flax. The next step in the process is breaking the retted flax to release the usable fibers. I let the retted flax dry out. My husband built me a flax break. You can find videos on YouTube that show people using…

Flax seed has been an important part of our diet for a number of years now and we always seem to find room for a patch of it somewhere in th...

From flax to linen

Most Recently - I turned a sheep fleece into a Hat -- https://youtu.be/-4f75ZfPvP0I started my flax to linen journey over a year ago - this is a compilation ...

Growing and Preparing Flax for Spinning – Fiadnata's Notebook

Artisans in our region have been working with flax for centuries. Their skills and expertise have been passed on from generation to generation. From field…

Tutorial: How to harvest Linen flax on your homestead.

The Inconsequential Blogger: Continuing progress in my growing flax for linen experiment

Flax for linen In the UK Linum Usitatissimum is "linseed" and "flax". Different varieties have been developed over millennia some are better for producing seeds, which we call linseed and others, taller with finer fibre in the stems for making linen, the is flax. Both linseed and flax have blue flowers. "Flax" means different things...

Learn how to plant and process fibre flax with our guide. Discover the best techniques for growing and harvesting flax for high-quality fibre production.

This year I am on a mission to encourage gardeners to grow textile fibers and take them all the way to clothes to wear. The last post was devoted to flax for linen and this one is about cotton. Not…

So, three years ago I started growing flax in the hopes of processing it into linen yarn and then making something with it. This is something that I have secretly wanted to do ever since reading A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich back in the 1990's. Martha was a midwife in the later 1700's in New England. She kept a kitchen garden, an herb garden (medicinal) for her profession, and she grew flax so that she could make linen…

Flax Maze at Till/Until Flax Field Donegal 2015

In a world of increasing mass production, where nearly all raw material is shipped to be processed in other countries, the most sustainable option may well be already growing in your own back yard. Or, at least be possible to grow in your own back yard or garden. While keeping clothing in circulation and good ... Read More about Sustainable Clothing: Growing Your Own Plant Fibers

Flax plants in a field. Image from Healthy Flax on Flickr.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending The New England Flax and Linen Symposium in Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts organized...