Homegrown Flax and Cotton–the book is here!

My new book, Homegrown Flax and Cotton: DIY Guide to Growing, Processing, Spinning & Weaving Fiber to Cloth is here! If you want to learn how to clothe yourself from your garden, this is the book for you. Even if you never grow your own clothes, it is interesting to learn how one could do that.

Learn when to plant the seeds of flax and cotton and how to go about getting the resulting fiber into something to wear. (Once flax is spun it is called linen.) To go from seed to garment you need skills in gardening, spinning, weaving (or knitting and crocheting), and sewing. In the case of flax, you will need to break, scutch, and hackle. This book leads you through all that and suggests resources to help you along the way. It even includes detailed plans to make a tabletop flax brake. There are also plans to make a one-yard swift that can be adjusted for the skeins once they have shrunk from scouring. Homemade hackles are covered, also.

You can order autographed copies from me at www.HomeplaceEarth.com or come and see me at one of my book signings. I will be at the Ashland Farmers Market on Saturday, July 1, from 9am-noon. On Saturday, August 12, at 11am I will be at the Ashland Branch of the Pamunkey Regional Library giving a talk and signing books. In October you can find me demonstrating flax-to-linen and signing books at Scotchtown, home of Patrick Henry, on Saturday, the 7^th, and at the Fall Fiber Festival at Montpelier Station, VA the next day on October 8.

Monday, September 25 visit me at the Horticulture Pavilion at the State Fair of Virginia from 10am-2pm. I won’t have books for sale, but will be talking about my work and have equipment and my homegrown clothes on display.

All these events are listed on the Events page of my website. As more things are scheduled, I will update the page, so check back regularly. You may possibly find me at the book signing tent at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY in October.

When I first started on this adventure I often had trouble finding answers to my questions. Sometimes I just had to figure it out for myself. I wrote Homegrown Flax and Cotton to help you have an easier time of following this path—and to have more people in the know to play with. Hope you join the fun!

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Fall 2022 Events and New Book in 2023

I will be at a few events this fall and I hope some of you will come out and see me. First up is the Virginia State Fair. Find me in the Horticulture Pavilion on Monday, September 26 from 10am-2pm meeting folks and answering questions about gardening and growing cotton and flax and taking that fiber all the way to clothes.

The first weekend in October is busy. I will be at Scotchtown, home of Patrick Henry, demonstrating flax-to-linen on Saturday, October 1, from 10am-4pm. The next day, Sunday, October 2, I will be at the Fall Fiber Festival at Montpelier Station, VA., also demonstrating flax-to-linen all afternoon. Look for me at the demos tent.

I have been working on a book about my fiber work for the past few years and am happy to announce that it is now with the publisher, Stackpole Books, working its way through that process. Homegrown Flax and Cotton: DIY Guide to Growing, Processing, Spinning & Weaving Fiber to Cloth is expected to be out in print on July 1, 2023. I enlisted the help of my daughter-in-law, Stephanie, to take photos. I will be wearing my homegrown clothes in all the photos you see of me in the book. In this photo I am wearing a linen dress I made from my flax in 2021. I was a bit short on fiber, but when my good friend Jan passed in August 2020, the flax she had grown came to me. It was enough to finish the project. I dyed the warp with Japanese indigo that I had grown and left the weft natural. I made the shirt from cotton that daughter Betsy had grown as part of our Cotton Project. There is a whole chapter on the Cotton Project in the book. The green and brown cotton had crossed and in the process of growing out subsets of seeds to get back to the original green and brown, we found some white. You’ll have to read all about it in the book.

The message in the book is not only to grow your own clothes, but to think of where the clothes you wear come from and how the earth and the people responsible for their production are compensated in the process. Each action we take affects everything else. We have to not only think about those people on the planet now but look to taking care of things for future generations. To that end, I thought it would be fun to have another generation of Conners in the book, so I included our twin grandsons. However, if they were in the book, they would need homegrown clothes. You will see them wearing overalls I made. Since my shirt and their overalls are new this year, I was quite busy deseeding cotton, spinning, and weaving from January through the spring. Here is a teaser photo of the boys that Stephanie, their mom, took when we were doing our photo shoot. You’ll see that photo and a complete one of me and the boys in the book.

It has been quite a journey getting this book done. Besides all the how-to of going from seed to garment, there will be plans for a tabletop flax brake and for a small swift. You can thank my wonderful husband, Walt, for making that happen. I want folks to have no barriers to getting started. This can be done in your garden. I had a lot of catching up in my garden to do this summer, since I had to let some things go. I am caught up now and it is nice to not be quite so busy, although somehow, new projects seem to pop into my mind from time to time. There is always something to do.

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Homegrown Cotton Shirt in the News!

My homegrown, handspun, handwoven, naturally-colored, cotton shirt is in the latest issue–April/May 2018–of the Mother Earth News!

 

You can access the article online here, but it is prettier to read in the print magazine.

Enjoy!

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Heritage Harvest Festival 2017

The Heritage Harvest Festival is coming up September 8 and 9. It is a huge deal held at Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, near Charlottesville, VA. This event is sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Seed Savers Exchange. It celebrates food, sustainable agriculture, and the preservation of heritage plants.

Saturday, September 9 is the main event. Up on the mountain there will be booths with vendors, demonstrations on all sorts of stuff, and tents where talks will be held. For one admission price of $28 (children 5-11 $9, under 5 FREE) you have access to all the speakers that day. In years past, some of the talks were premium talks that required signing up ahead and paying a separate fee. Many of the premium talks were held at the visitor center. This year on Saturday there will be no talks at the visitor center.

Homegrown Flax–retted straw, processed fiber, spun flax (now called linen)

There will be premium talks at the visitor center on Friday, September 8 and that is where you will find me.  This is the 11^th year for the festival and the 10^th year that I will be speaking there. The Heritage Harvest Festival celebrates local food and gardening and usually my talks reflect that. I have given talks on cover crops, growing sustainable diets, garden planning, seed libraries, and how to transition from a home gardener to a market gardener. This year my talk is From Seed to Garment: Cotton and Flax/Linen in Your Garden. I am looking forward to sharing my work with fiber. Monticello is working on a textile exhibit that will open in 2018 to showcase the spinning and weaving that was done at the plantation, primarily to clothe the slaves. I am happy to bring a bit of textile production to the place ahead of that.

Homegrown, handspun, naturally colored cotton shirt.

I will still be around on Saturday and you will find me in the Homeplace Earth booth, #RR7 on Retailer Row. If you can’t make it to the talk on Friday and really want to take a closer look at my homegrown clothes, come and find me Saturday. I will have them in the booth, along with my DVDs and books that I have for sale. I won’t be selling any homegrown clothes, though.

This is a unique event. You get to hang around Thomas Jefferson’s backyard and enjoy so many things besides the great view. My friends Kim and Jimbo Cary will be playing music under the trees. They will have some gourds, washboards, and tamborines for you to use if you want to join in. They are great with the kids. When you are not taking in a lecture you can stop by the Seed Tent and do some seed swapping. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange will have their tomato tasting, as always. You can wander through their tent and try varieties of tomatoes that you probably never knew existed. I’m sure Thomas Jefferson is in his glory, having all of this at his home. He so much enjoyed experimenting with new crops at Monticello. When I am there I take the time to stop, look around, and marvel at what is going on. All of this celebration of agriculture and food in this particular place! Fantastic!

The Heritage Harvest Festival will expose you to many new and not-so-new projects around the region that promote sustainable agriculture. A word of warning to those like me who carry a pocket knife–this year they will be screening for things like that, so leave your knife in the car. Come for a day on the mountain, make new friends, and be sure to come by and see me!

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Flax to Linen: Spinning

I have promised to take you through the whole process of seed to garment with flax this year. You start with getting seeds in the ground, then once harvest occurs—which is about 100 days from planting—a whole lot more needs to happen before you have fiber to spin. Nevertheless, I have decided to jump right to spinning. You can learn to spin flax fiber you have bought while you are waiting for the harvest. That is what I did starting out. When it is closer to harvest, I’ll write about what to do next.

Whether you are going to spin flax or cotton, it is always a bit different working with “store bought” fiber, rather than with your homegrown fiber. However, any experience you have with whatever fiber you can acquire will be beneficial. Lacking homegrown flax, you can buy flax to spin in either strick form, also known as line flax, or roving. A strick is what you will have from your homegrown flax. It is long flax fibers, just as it would come from the hackles. You will learn about hackles in a future post. You need to keep those fibers manageable while you are spinning, and that is the part that was daunting to me at first, until I learned that all I needed to do was to hang them up like a ponytail and pull fibers from the bottom to spin. You can see in the photo that I hang a flax strick from a fancy stand that I believe held a lamp long ago. I thought it was interesting when I found it in someone’s barn, not knowing that I would put it to use as a distaff.

A distaff is what is used to hold fibers for spinning. You might have seen photos of traditional distaffs with flax fibers surrounding a core with a ribbon holding everything in place. In the Flax to Linen class at the John C. Campbell Folk School I learned to spread the fibers from a flax strick out and fill a distaff. This photo was taken during that class. Some distaffs are shorter and made to be portable. The spinner puts one end in her/his belt or pocket, supporting the rod with their arm, as they spin on a spindle.

That was interesting and traditional, and I am sure it has some advantages, but hanging up the flax ponytail is a lot easier. A ribbon can still be added if you like. A simple free-standing distaff can be made from a long dowel or broom handle mounted on a base. A knob on top will give you something to tie the flax to. In her book The Practical Spinner’s Guide: Cotton, Flax, and Hemp, Sephanie Gaustad suggests putting a broom into a Christmas tree stand for a distaff. You could even hang a flax ponytail from a nail in the wall.

Turkish spindle with flax roving.

When I spin at home with my Louett S10 wheel, I use the set-up you see in the first photo. That spinning wheel was a gift from a friend who no longer needed it. I didn’t shop around and choose it for spinning flax. When I spin flax away from home I spin on a spindle; more specifically, a Turkish spindle. There are many kinds of spindles you could use, but I chose this one because I was in need of a spindle for flax when I visited the Woolgatherers store in Wisconsin and found this one made by a local woodworker from local wood. Furthermore, the woodworker’s name was Scott Snyder—same name as my brother in Ohio, who is also a woodworker. My brother makes rocking horses and other rocking things. I think Turkish spindles are great because they come apart, leaving you with your ball of yarn intact. You spin a length of yarn, then wind on going over two legs and under one all around (or over one and under two). Attach the yarn to the top of the spindle with a half-hitch and you are ready to spin some more.

You can make a drop spindle with a ¼” dowel, about 12” long or so, and a 2” wooden wheel, such as you would find in a craft store. If you put a hook in the end of the dowel, you don’t have to bother with the half hitch at the top when you are spinning. Once you spin a length of yarn, you wind it on the dowel, then spin some more.

Although I spin cotton clockwise (Z twist), I read in Linen: From Flax Seed to Woven Cloth by Linda Heinrich that flax fibers naturally spin counter-clockwise (S twist), so I spin flax counter-clockwise. To tell the truth, I never took the time to notice the natural spin of flax. You can spin either way, as long as you remember which way that is and always do it the same.

Turkish spindle with flax strick.

The flax you buy to spin might be in roving form (above photo), which is sort of an untwisted rope. Cotton spinners may be familiar with cotton roving. The fibers in roving, which is machine prepared, are shorter than line flax. When I was first learning I bought flax roving from Paradise Fibers and a strick from Woolgatherers. At first I thought that the roving would be easier. I left it wound up in the bag it came in and pulled from there. I put the flax bag inside a shoulder bag so that it was hanging at my side and spun it on my Turkish spindle. However, the more I worked with the line flax, the better I liked it. Also, the line flax was what I would be working with once I grew my own. I learned that I could fold a towel around the line flax and lay it in my lap while I spun on my spindle. Of course, if I am walking around, like I tend to do at a handspinning meeting, I need to drape the towel over my arm or put in my shoulder bag hanging at my side.

It is best to moisten flax with water or saliva while you are spinning it. It will help to make it smooth, avoiding a hairy appearance. Traditionally, a spinner would lick her/his fingers while spinning to provide the moisture. Although I have used the saliva method, and like the idea of my enzymes being added to the fiber, I usually spin at the wheel with a dish in my lap holding a rag moistened with water or, if I am moving around with the spindle, I attach a cup to my belt loop with a small carabiner to hold the moistened rag.

I hope these tips will help to get you started spinning flax. Practice now and you will be ready when you have your own homegrown fiber to spin

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Fibersheds

Homegrown cotton vest with black walnut-dyed shirt.

Fibershed is the name of a non-profit organization started by Rebecca Burgess in 2010 in California. Her goal was to “develop and wear a prototype wardrobe whose dyes, fibers and labor were sourced from a region no larger than 150 miles from the project’s headquarters.” Since then her work has expanded and other Fibershed groups around the world have signed on to explore textile production in their own regions. You will find their Facebook pages and activities on the Internet. It is a fitting name for a group looking close to home for their fiber sources. Just like watershed is concerned with where the water comes from for a region, and foodshed looks at our local food systems, I can see the word fibershed becoming a buzz word anywhere someone is talking about clothing themselves locally.

On the Fibershed website I found the term soil-to-skin. I have often used the term seed-to-garment, but I like soil-to-skin, since it takes the concerns further. I also found soil-to-soil used on the website. If your clothes will compost, just bury them at the end of their useful life and let them replenish the soil. Twenty years ago not so many people were as concerned about the source of their food as they are presently. Now, I hope they start talking more about where their fiber comes from—their fibershed. As with their food, it all starts with the soil to produce cotton, flax/linen, and wool. Synthetic fibers are not part of this conversation.

brown cotton boll

Many of the Fibershed groups deal heavily with wool. That could be because there are more farmers with small herds of fiber animals than there are farmers with small plots of cotton. I don’t say much about wool because I have my hands full with the cotton and flax/linen from my garden. So much of the cotton grown worldwide is genetically modified that you might think that non-GMO organic cotton is not available to the consumer. I sew my own clothes and set out to see what I could find. It would be wonderful to have sewn a whole wardrobe by now from my homegrown cotton and linen, but so far I have only a vest and a shirt. Spinning the fiber takes time, but it is mindful and enjoyable work. I have learned about the toxic effects of textile dyes and have been exploring those, also. There is a black walnut tree in my backyard and I eat lots of onions from my garden. Walnuts and onion skins are both terrific for dyeing.

Shirt dyed with onion skins.

I like to use Kona cotton for shirts because it wears so well. When I did some checking I found that it met the Standard 100 by OEKO-TEX certification for human-ecological requirements. That doesn’t mean it is organic, but they are moving in the right direction. You’ll find Kona cotton in fabric stores and quilt shops. I wanted to make a shirt to wear with my homegrown cotton vest, but couldn’t find a color in my fabric store that would do. However, this fall I had experimented with the black walnuts and realized that produced just the color I needed. Furthermore, I discovered that Dharma Trading Company sold Kona Cotton PFD (prepared for dyeing); meaning that it was not treated with optical whiteners. I bought enough for two shirts. You can see the black-walnut dyed shirt in the first photo at the top of this page and the shirt dyed with onion skins here. Obviously, this shirt took the color well from the onion skins. I’ve already rinsed out any extra color, but it may fade a bit over time. The buttons were in my stash from previous projects or cut from old clothes.

I needed a new turtleneck shirt to wear with my new homegrown cotton shirt. It is hard for me to find cotton turtlenecks in the weight of fabric I want (they all seem to be too thin) and ones that have cuffs and enough length in the body and in the sleeves. My search for organic cotton led me to Organic Cotton Plus, a company started in Texas by organic cotton farmers to sell directly to people like you and me. It has since entered the global marketplace. I found nice organic cotton interlock for my turtleneck shirts! You can order swatches (99 cents each) of the fabrics you are interested in if you want to see and feel it first, like me. I bought enough fabric for two shirts and made a pattern from an old turtleneck that fit me best, making adjustments as necessary. I love this new shirt. It is a recent project, so sorry, I have no photo to show you of the turtleneck I made, but you’ll see it eventually. I will make the second shirt when I decide what I want to dye it with. Organic Cotton Plus had this interlock in colors, but none that matched what I needed.

I initially took an interest in Organic Cotton Plus because I was looking for organic cotton grown in the U.S. I had already bought naturally brown denim for jeans from Sally Fox at Vreseis.com. Although that’s how it started out, not all the cotton for fabrics sold through Organic Cotton Plus comes from this country. I see that the organic fabric for my turtlenecks came from India. Maybe I’m helping to support the Indian farmers that Vandana Shiva worked with to overcome their experience with Monsanto and GMOs. That would be a good thing.

I knitted three pairs of wool socks this past year from yarn I bought from Kathy Oliver of Sweet Tree Hill Farm. Kathy is a shepherd and we are both members of the same handspinning group. I bought the first two skeins at the Powhatan Fiber Festival in April and knitted the first pair in the natural color. I grew Japanese indigo last summer and used it for my first dyeing adventures, resulting in the blue socks. It was so much fun I bought a third skein when I saw her at the Fall Fiber Festival in October. I used that skein to play with indigo, onion skins, and black walnuts to make variegated yarn.

I applaud the groups that are working to develop textile systems that are environmentally safe and people friendly. It is when we take a closer look at our systems that we can detect ways we can change them—or, maybe do without. You probably know that I’ve worked with growing food and looking closely at what it would take to grow a complete diet. In my blog posts on Homegrown Fridays I share my experiences of limiting what I consumed on the Fridays in Lent to only what I grew myself. That was definitely an eye-opener, so I can see that if someone decided to limit their clothes to what could be produced naturally in their region, they have an adventure ahead of them. Rebecca and her group are working to change the system. I am on a personal journey to produce my own clothes as close to home as possible. If I have to buy fabric or yarn I want my purchases to do the most good they can. Meanwhile, I hope that by sharing my experiences, others will start a journey of their own. There is so much fun stuff to do in this world on our way to making it a better place!

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