Flax to Linen Workshops at Snow Farm

Cassie Dickson teaching how to turn flax into linen.

From the response to the Mother Earth News article about my homegrown cotton shirt in their April/May 2018 issue, there seems to be much interest in growing your own clothes. For those whose weather is not conducive to cotton, you might want to consider flax. Cassie Dickson is teaching a Flax to Linen class at Snow Farm in Williamsburg, Massachusetts June 10-16, 2018. If a week is too long for you, she is teaching a shorter version of that workshop on June 16-17. Cassie taught the Flax to Linen workshop for Clothos Handspinners here last summer.  Find more information about these events at https://www.snowfarm.org/workshops/topics/fiber-baskets/flax-plant-linen-cloth and https://www.snowfarm.org/workshops/topics/fiber-baskets/spinning-delight-flax-linen-thread.

Whether you are growing flax for linen or cotton, and turning it into clothes,  it is an exciting adventure. You could grow both! My latest shirt is white cotton warp and linen weft. I’ll tell you about it sometime.

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Flax to Linen Workshop

Flax brake in use during workshop.

Last month Clotho’s Handspinners, the handspinning group I am part of, sponsored a Flax to Linen Workshop. My husband, Walt, and I hosted it at our place and it was wonderful! Cassie Dickson, our instructor from North Carolina, has been working with flax for many years and teaches the Flax to Linen class at the John C. Campbell Folk School each year. I met her when I took that class in 2015. Although the pictures you usually see in this blog are ones that I took, thank Stephanie Conner, our daughter-in-law, for these wonderful photos. She volunteered to be our photographer for the workshop.

Show and Tell evening program.

Cassie and her husband Charlie arrived on June 9 and that evening everyone came for a 2 hour orientation and show-and-tell. Cassie gave a Powerpoint presentation and explained the many things she had brought for us to see. She had so much good information to share. The next day everyone would learn the mechanics of turning flax into linen, but this was different.

Flax to Linen instructor Cassie Dickson.

The weather was beautiful on Saturday, June 10, for the workshop. Understandably, this part took place outside. Trees provided shade, as did our house, and we put up a canopy for more. The hours for the workshop were 9am to 4pm. Everyone showed up with their spinning wheels, ready to learn. Cassie explained each step of the process of turning flax into linen. Then everyone was free to use the equipment we had set up and have at it for themselves, with help from Cassie, of course. (Once you separate the fiber from the flax straw it is still called flax until it is spun, then it is linen.)

Flax samples grown and retted by  Cassie.

Cassie had samples for everyone of flax that she had grown herself and retted differently. This way the participants could have experience working with flax that was over retted, under retted, and retted just right. She also had some line flax that had been purchased for everyone to spin. Line flax is what you would end up with after processing. She showed how to prepare a distaff with line flax and had even brought distaffs for each person to use. They were self-supporting posts with tissue paper wrapped around the top. The flax was tied over the paper and you pulled it from there.

Hackles of various sizes were available to use.

Breaking and scutching with tabletop tools

Cassie brought some equipment with her and we added to it. Besides the distaffs, she had a set of hackles, two tabletop flax brakes, and a tabletop scutching board. I provided my brake (top photo), scutching board, and hackles. We also had the use of two more flax brakes provided by Clothos members Jan and Becky, who are already knowledgeable about flax and wanted to support the workshop. In addition, Jan loaned her hackles. We had plenty of equipment to keep the group busy.

After processing their flax, spinners found shady places to use their wheels.

When they weren’t breaking, scutching, and hackling, the participants were spinning using their own spinning wheels. When I took the class at the Folk School, although already knowing how to use a spinning wheel was recommended, not everyone did. Since this was a group of spinners, that was not a problem here. There are some differences spinning flax over other fibers and that is what they were learning. One of the differences was that it is best to use water when spinning flax, so everyone had a small bowl of water nearby to dip their fingers into.

Flax growing in the foreground in the garden.

Everyone brought their own lunch and I provided water and iced tea. After lunch, before we started back to work, I led a tour of my garden.  I had flax growing that was one week away from harvest. There was also cotton to see, plus my food crops, cover crops, and compost piles. When we first started to plan this workshop last winter I knew that my place would be the best location to have it. We could fit everyone in our house and backyard and there would be flax growing in the garden.

 

Instructor Cassie Dickson (right) offering spinning tips to Susan Palmer.

If you are thinking of bringing an instructor in from afar for a workshop of any kind, you need to plan carefully. We needed to cover Cassie’s travel, food, lodging, and her workshop fee. Also, there was a $45 materials fee for each participant. If travel is by car, reimbursement usually corresponds to the standard IRS mileage deduction for business, which is 53.5 cents per mile for 2017—make sure to count roundtrip miles. So, the further away your instructor is, the more the workshop will cost. If we would have needed to rent a space for the workshop or provide hotel accommodations, that would have increased the cost. Wherever you have it, you need to supply a large enough space, parking, clean bathrooms, etc. Instead, I hosted Cassie and her husband at my home as friends and loved having everyone here for the workshop. Our barnyard provided parking space. The twelve people who signed on for the workshop each paid $140.

 

Clotho’s Handspinners’ Flax to Linen Workshop, June 2017

It was a great time! Yes, it was a lot of work getting ready to have the workshop here, but that meant projects around the house that we had been putting off got done. The only time the four of us (Cassie, Charlie, Walt, and I) had to sit and enjoy talking together was during dinner before the evening program and breakfast the next morning.  It was a busy time, but now more Clothos members know the ins and outs of working with flax, so I have more people to play with. It was a great way to start the summer!

 

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Flax to Linen at the Folk School

In November I had the wonderful opportunity to take the Flax to Linen class at the John C. Campbell Folk School  in Brasstown, North Carolina. I don’t remember when I first heard about the Folk School, but it was many years ago. Whenever I met someone, most often broom makers and blacksmiths, who had taken a class there, they always recommended it. I came across the Folk School’s listing for their Flax to Linen class this summer. It was a busy time and I still had two major trips ahead for the Mother Earth News Fairs, so I put the thought of attending aside but kept it in the back of my mind. By the time I had returned from Pennsylvania where my flax experiences included the Stahlstown Flax Scutching Festival and the Landis Valley Farm and Museum, in addition to the MEN Fair, I was ready to consider the flax class. It was full, however, and I was put on the waiting list. I thought that if I was meant to be in that class, a space would open up. A couple of weeks before the class was to start I got the call that I was in.

There were eight students in the class that was taught by Cassie Dickson and her assistant Peggy Patrick. Cassie was a great instructor and was backed by much experience. She grew some of the flax we were working with. Peggy makes her own shoes, among other things, and has taught classes at the Folk School about that. I was pleased to see that Jan Thomas, a fellow member of Clothos Handspinners, was there. Although Jan and I were there because we intend to grow flax and make linen for ourselves, not everyone aspired to be producers. They were there to learn the process because they thought it was interesting, to learn more about their heritage, or to learn enough to encourage the museum they volunteered at to add flax-to-linen as a program.

Among the students there was a wide range of skills and previous experience with flax or any other fiber. I had acquired a spinning wheel in August, but delayed getting started with it until I could replace a couple parts. I was an experienced spindle spinner, but spinning on the wheel was something else and took getting used to. I kept at it so I would be comfortable with the wheel before I attended the class. For me, spinning flax was important. For some of the others, the exposure of what was involved was all they were after. I was able to take my wheel, but if you didn’t have one there were wheels available to use. Everyone was spinning before the first day ended. After having just gone through my learning process with the wheel, I had great respect for those who were learning to use the wheel in class for the first time. We learned about distaffs and how to put line flax on one, which I found helpful

The second day we worked outside breaking, scutching, and hackling flax. How well the flax is retted before you work with it is important. We had the opportunity to work with flax from more than one harvest and retting. Since the processing can be dusty, we were advised to wear a mask while we worked, which explains why Ron was wearing a handkerchief over his face while he was breaking flax, as you can see in this photo. Ron is a Folk School regular, taking a new class every couple months or so.

The focus at the John C. Campbell Folk School is to help people develop skills in a non-competitive environment. Everyone learned at his/her own speed and could concentrate on the aspects of the craft they were most interested in. To quote from their 2015 catalog, “…the Folk School seeks to bring people toward two kinds of development: inner growth as creative, thoughtful individuals, and social development as tolerant, caring members of a community.” I enjoyed being in the class and couldn’t help but think of the students who took my classes in the past at the community college. They, too, arrived with different skills and ambitions and it was fun seeing them work toward their own goals. Unfortunately, they also had to work toward my goals and I was required to give them a grade. There are no grades at the Folk School, just learning.

The third day we were into dyeing, although processing and spinning continued. Cassie prepared dyepots of marigold, osage orange, broom sedge, onion skins, madder, butternut, and butternut with iron added, plus two indigo pots. She had already prepared the linen samples by mordanting with alum, tannin, then alum again. The marigold, osage orange, broom sedge, and onion skin dyes yielded yellow colors. Samples of each yellow were put in the indigo to produce green, each expressing a different shade. The madder was dug from the Folk School garden the day before to make the red dye.

Plant fibers take up dyes differently than animal fibers. In this photo you can see a sample of wool yarn that came out a deeper red than the linen dyed with the madder. The photo also shows four green samples from the yellows overdyed with indigo. Cassie plans on teaching this flax class next year, but dyeing won’t be part of it. Instead, silk will be added. Yes, she has her own silk worms and knows what to do with them. The next day we had the opportunity to try our hand at weaving patterns on three small table looms that were warped and ready to go. We each prepared a book of samples of the flax straw, processing at each stage, and our own spinning and weaving. The books included linen swatches from each color dyed.

Besides this class there was so much more going on around us. I stayed on the grounds, as did many others and we all ate together in the dining hall. That was a wonderful opportunity to meet others and learn about the classes they were taking. In the evenings there were other activities to participate in. It happened to be Shaker Week, so much was centered around that. Our class finished each day by 4:30, allowing us time to take advantage of these activities. However, that was not so for some of the other classes. The weavers, woodworkers, and basket and broom makers tended to return to their studios in the evening. The last afternoon everyone gathered in the main hall with each class displaying their work. It was fun to see what we had been hearing about all week.

If you want to meet interesting people and learn something new, check out the John C. Campbell Folk School. I am happy I had the experience.

As the holidays approach, remember that Homeplace Earth now offers free shipping on books and DVDs. In addition to the ones we have written or produced, there some other great books that are available at a discount while supplies last.

 

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