Why I want to learn to grow, harvest and use flax this year
I’m rather fond of sewing with linen. I like it almost as much as I do sewing with wool. Wool is my favourite fibre for so many reasons which I won’t go into here. But linen is a very close second. Why? Well, first of all it’s been used for centuries and centuries to clothe people. Seemingly, it grows pretty well in Scotland.
I’ve been sewing some stays over the past couple of weeks. I’m struggling a bit as my eyes are being a bit stupid right now and I can only concentrate for a short while. But there is something so incredibly relaxing and mindful about doing some very simple backstitching of channels using waxed linen thread, going through three layers of linen fabric. It feels so lovely pulling the thread through the fabric, stitch after stitch.
A few years ago, Maureen Shaw did some research into growing flax at the Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore. Some of the flax she grew there has been turned into traditional paint (read more here). There is also lots of historically-accurate processing equipment at the Highland Folk Museum, which Maureen used in her research and demonstrated to the public in the Before Times (i.e. before Covid).
While sewing this week, I’ve been thinking about the names of some of the places I visited while in Uist - Cladach Cnoc a Lin - the Lint Hill- and Loch a’ Mhulinn - the Mill loch. Of course there are no remnants of the linen industry there now. Then I thought about stories I have read in the Old Statistical Account. For example, like many areas in the Highlands post-Culloden, Braemar became a centre of linen production (page 341 onwards, which is about nine pages in on the pdf).
I’ve also been decluttering clothes. I don’t know about you, but I have far too many clothes that I do not wear. So does my husband and daughter. In a Marie Kondo-inspired hour of madness, I gathered together three black bin bags full of clothes to donate to charity. I could probably have easily gathered a few more too if I hadn’t run out of energy. And we are just a few people. I felt ashamed by how we are wasting the Earth’s resources. Here’s a link about the impact of textile production on the world today, so you can have a think about how many clothes you have too.
Things haven’t always been like this. Our ancestors were never able to pop to the supermarket at any time day or night and buy clothing, as a lot of us can in the Western world now. They valued their clothing more, first because it was more expensive to purchase but also because there wasn’t as much emphasis on fast fashion as there is today. Celebrity culture is a part of the problem here too; have you ever seen your favourite actor or artist in the same clothes more than once? (Pearl Jam fans, I know that Ed and the lads are an exception here!) I remember reading a headline of a British newspaper a while back celebrating the fact that Kate Middleton had ‘recycyled’ an outfit; what a load of nonsense!
Anyway, to get back on topic. This has all made me think that I would like to see how long it takes me to grow enough flax, the process it, spin it and weave it, and maybe bleach it in a historically-accurate manner, so I can make a historically-inspired garment from it. I’m thinking a set of stays. I used to hate making stays, but actually I’m really quite enjoying making them now. Taking Christina Johnson’s excellent online course during lockdown certainly helped change my mind and vastly improved my skills, and I highly recommend it to everyone. By nature I’m quite an impatient person, but having long covid has made me slow down and very much appreciate all the tiny joys we usually miss when we are too busy. Like the early morning dew on the grass in the spring, how good it feels to walk around on the grass barefoot, how good it feels to have the sun gently warm your skin and so on. So, I’m actually now delighting in things taking time, in how long stays take to make (A fully boned set of stays takes a skilled modern sewist about 300 hours to sew entirely by hand, partly boned somewhere between 100-200) rather than getting annoyed by it. And to think about how long it takes a tiny seed to grow into a plant, then a plant which can harvested to eventually producing clothing.
If maybe more folks appreciated how long it takes to make good quality clothing properly, they would be less wasteful and more appreciative of those who have spent many many hours honing their craft, rather than associating it with thrift, grannies and expecting something for free.
This year, I challenge anyone reading this to not buy any new clothes.
Instead, I would like to inspire you to think about whether you already have enough.
Whether you could, like Kate Middleton, ‘recycle’ an outfit.
Whether you could sew a patch on a pair of jeans you wear around the house or garden.
Whether you could learn how to darn socks rather than buy a pack of six socks for less than £10 at the supermarket.
Whether you could, like I intend, to learn some new skills and then pass them on to others.
All images in today’s blogpost are stock images from Squarespace. I think they are rather beautiful and hope you enjoy them too.