Grow Your Own Clothes: Flax and Nettles

 

In 2022 I attended a nettle fiber workshop at the Weald and Downland Living Museum.

It filled my head with ideas, but I hadn't really had a chance to do anything about them, although I had foraged my own nettles from the woods behind the house.  So when I saw the 3 day course at West Dean (right next door to the Weald and Downland) covering both flax and nettles and taken by Allan, the chap who made The Nettle Dress, I had to sign up. 

Flax

 

Over the three days we followed the process of growing flax and foraging nettles, before extracting the fiber from them and spinning it ready to use in making fabric.

We started with flax.  It is grown for 100 days then pulled up and left to ret - this can take up to 7 weeks!  You can then break the storks to release the fibers before scutching, hackling, carding and spinning.  As we were only working with big handfuls we were able to complete the processing in a day.

Spinning flax

 It was hard, dusty work but satisfying when you end up with this lovely soft yarn.

I've not really done any spinning before and it came out lumpy and rough.  But under Allan's tutorage and having had a break for dinner, when I came back to it, I started to get a thinner more consistance yarn.

Spinning flax - getting better

 

On day 2 we started on nettles.  First we went out into the West Dean grounds to forage some nettles, before coming back to work on some that Allan had already retted and dried.

I already knew this would be harder work than the flax from the workshop in 2022, and I was right.  While the flax broke apart quite easily, the nettles didn't want to help us in any way.

 

Interestingly, Allan had us roll the nettle fiber between our hands before we scraped them, and I did find this made them less prone to giving me splinters which was welcome.

By the end of the day I had a small roll of nettle fibers ready to spin, but wanted to practice my spinning a little more on easier fibers before doing the nettle.

Day three was a little more chilled as we practiced our spinning.  While most of us were using drop spindles a couple of ladies had bought spinning machines with them.  It was facinating to learn more about how these machines work.

Spinning nettle

 

By lunchtime I had spun some of my flax, some wool and my nettle fibers.  Still lumpy in places, mostly where the line had broken and I'd had to rejoin, but getting better and better.

So after lunch I tried weaving my nettle yarn.  I started with a plain pattern then added a twill.  This was fun as you could get into a rhythum and just crack on.  But I have to say I was surprised.  I didn't think that in 3 days I would be able to process nettles and make it into fabric, even if it's quite a small piece.

This was a super learning experience.  Allan was so friendly and pactient and ready to share all his knowledge.  The other ladies were lovely too and everyone was happy to roll their sleeves up and get hands on.

Nettle ready for weaving

 

But I did find three days a bit full on and I'm glad to have a weekend to recover.  There was so much to take in and learn and it was a bit more physical than some of the other courses I've done. 

I enjoyed the spinning and the weaving but processing the fibers was hard work.  I do think that everyone should have to have a go at this before they are allowed to buy fabric of any kind, to get a real understanding of what goes into it and why we shouldn't be so quick to just discard things.  If I knew I would have to do all of this again to replace something I was thinking of throwing out, I would be having second thoughs.

Hackling flax

Tins With Lids

 

 

You might have seen that I've been learning how to blow hollow beads recently.

Sometimes they go well, sometimes not so much.  And having had a whole batch crack I decided something needed to be done and bought myself some cooling bubbles.

 

The idea of cooling beads is you can immerse your hollow bead in the cooling bubbles and it will cool slowly without cracking.  Hollow beads don't have to sit in the kiln like my solid beads as you're not trying to bring the centre and outer of your bead to the same temperture before cooling.  

But once my cooling bubbles arrived I realised I had nothing to put them in.  Doh!

 

The website suggests a metal sweet tin, which would be perfect, but all the 'tins' we had were plastic (not so good with very hot glass).  I did ask my parents and my in-laws if they had any, but they only had shallow biscuit tins.  No good to get good coverage.

So I went into town after pottery class, and had a look in the charity shops.

The British Heart Foundation had a set of 3 odd shaped cake tins - perfect!  And a steal at only £5.

 

Then I started wondering if I needed some lids.  I asked 'im outdoors if he could make me some very simple wooden lids to stop dust and dirt getting in.  And just look at what he made me out of scrap.

So this is just a reminder, that you don't have to buy brand new to get the things you need.  

 

 

I have used them and they were prefect.