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A Wandering Elf

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Linen Experiments

8/18/2014

2 Comments

 
I love linen.  Most of my garb is sewn from linen fabric.  I have experimented with weaving it.  I had tried to grow it (will attempt that again in a few years when I am living at the farm property full-time and can water plants during the dry months).  At last, this weekend, I tried to spin it.

The first few yards were rough, as it is indeed very different than spinning wool.  However, once I got a feel for a slippery fiber that does not tend to grab its neighbors (doing half of the work for me in the drafting process), it was spinning wonderfully.

Interestingly enough, I found that it seemed to spin most easily on my smaller, low whorl spindles.  Normally I prefer top whorl spindles with wide, light-weight whorls.  For this, so far, my favorite tool is this spindle with a Sami reindeer antler whorl purchased a couple of years ago from Feed The Ravens/Viking-U-Like.  The thread I am spinning is quite fine and I will attempt to ply it to be used as sewing thread.  Plying will also be an adventure as I have only ever plied with my spinning wheel, even if the singles yarn was produced on drop-spindles.  I will finally make myself learn to ply without the wheel.

Picture
And while dyeing is not my first love, I have also decided to experiment a bit with linen dying.  I know the fiber does not take to dye as well as wool, but I am determined to get something more than the palest shades out of dyed linen.

For this experiment, I took linen yarn and (after washing with synthropol) steeped it in a solution made from oak galls (that I have been collecting for a year) for 24 hours.  The linen went from white to a tawny shade, so I know that it will sadden the final color, but hopefully the final dye will take better over that.  Currently it is in the alum mordant, and tonight it will go into a dyebath of madder root.  In the photo below you can see the color obtained from the oak galls on both the linen yarn and a swatch of linen fabric.

Picture
2 Comments
Grazia link
8/18/2014 01:19:14 am

Maybe split the stuff and try some in indigo? Blue linen is definitely documentable.

Reply
Álfrún ketta
8/18/2014 03:45:25 am

Splitting my time between two states makes it too difficult to run an indigo vat (though that is definitely a down-the-road project). I actually have two bundles of the yarn pre-mordanted. One will go in with madder, and the other with Queen Anne's Lace (though I do not have high hopes for that as not much dye seemed to be extracted from the plants, but I will try it anyways). Both will hopefully be used for the tablet woven header for a linen sample that will be going on my mini-warp-weighted loom. :-)

There is definitely both madder and woad dyed linen from Viking finds, but it is really difficult to get the darker shades on linen, so I figured I might as well futz around and try doing it with the oak galls since I spent all the time collecting them. Previously with alum only I only managed a pale rose.

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