Linen | Sewing With Style

Linen Fabrics

Linen is Back Big Time

In the early ages when man decided he needed clothing, he used the skins of the animals he hunted for food. Once man decided to settle down and give up the nomadic lifestyle, one of the first items produced from the land was flax. Growing flax is not an easy process and exactly how and where the flax is grown determines the quality of it. Even today you will find the quality of linen will vary depending on where the flax is grown and how it is spun.

Flax is a tall, reed-like plant, with long fibers which make it easy to spin into thread. To explain the process of making linen simply, you pick the plants, and then leave them to soak in a tub of water or a stream until the hard outside stem rots away and leaves the long, soft fibers underneath. Then you take the fibers and spin them on a spindle into linen thread. Linen can be spun coarse, or it can be spun very very fine, depending on the skill of the spinner and what you want to use it for. It’s softer and more comfortable than most fabric but if you’ve ever made anything from linen, you know it starts off stiff and scratchy and softens after time. Of course, today we have developed manuafcturing methods which speed up the process.

Linen was used for burial shrouds for the Egyptian pharaohs before Christ was born. In the British Museum, London, are pieces of mummy-linen 6,000 years old. Recently cuttings from these were microscopically examined and photographed (as illustrated below) at the Linen Industry Research Institute, Belfast, and were found to be as structurally perfect as linen made today

When the tomb of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Rameses II., who died 1258 B.C, - 3,000 years ago - was discovered in 1881, the linen wrappings were in a state of perfect preservation. PHOTO

It's only been in the past few years that linen has been rediscovered, and that has led to today's renaissance. Although some have preferred not to wear linen because it wrinkles easily, the comfort level of linen outweighs that more in today’s world. It can be washed prior to sewing which changes the hand by softening the fabric. It seems that the more it is washed the softer it gets and the less it wrinkles. It is so easy to sew, easy to embroider and wonderfully stable. If you have never sewn with linen, I highly recommend that you give it a try.

There are many other fabrics that are great to sew with in today's word and I recommend you look for some great bargains here.