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Fabric Facts: Linen by Len Turner (of Fabric Flair)
My family has had a long lasting love affair with linen, stretching back to the 1920s when the first of our businesses, the Irish Linen Depot, opened in Ealing, West London. Since then, linen has maintained its special place in our affections and in our fabric range.
Linen has certainly stood the test of time - there is evidence in Switzerland of flax working as far back as 8,000BC, and linen cloths were found in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs. When wet, unlike most natural fibres, linen increases in strength and has a high resistance to tearing. (It can absorb up to 120% of its own weight in water, and does not feel damp until it has absorbed 20%) It is the strongest natural fibre, and is recognised by its characteristic coolness, smoothness and sheen - though the irregularity of the individual threads can still be seen in even the finest linens.
Linen is made from the fibres of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Flax grows best in a loamy soil and a moist climate; hence the large plantings in France, Belgium, Holland and Russia. (Fields of blue flowering flax are seen increasingly in the UK, but these plants are grown for their seed to make linseed oil.) Linen fibres are made from the entire length of the straw-brown flax stem, so the crop must be pulled rather than cut, and the processing is labour-intensive and expensive. The fibres needed are hidden away in the centre of the stems, and glued there by pectin.
The hard straw-like outer coating of the stem is removed by ‘retting’, a rotting process activated by bacterial fermentation, which used to be done in natural pools close to rivers. Today, flax is retted in tanks containing an alkali mixture to speed up the process.
After retting, the flax is dried, then ‘scutched’, or beaten to separate the fibres from the woody parts of the stem. The waste product is used to make chipboard and the fibres are then ‘hackled’, or combed until the flax is sleek and golden (I’m always reminded of Debussy’s ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’). At this stage, the shorter fibres are separated for spinning into yarn for coarser fabrics, while the longer fibres are used for bed sheets, handkerchiefs and fine fashion fabrics. Linen fabric can be used in its loom state, or bleached and dyed into a wide range of colours.
The fabric used for counted needlework is divided in to two main groups: aida fabrics woven in definite blocks; or evenweave fabrics woven in single threads. Linen for cross stitch is part of the evenweave group. The term ‘evenweave’ refers to the method used to manufacture the fabric and does not mean that the material will have no lumps and bumps! There are equal numbers of warp and weft threads. So, when you work a cross stitch on evenweave fabric, the stitch appears square. If there were different numbers of warp and weft threads, the stitch would be squashed, shortened or elongated. To overcome the variable thickness of the linen threads, a cross stitch is generally formed over two threads of the linen. Linen creases easily, which is an advantage in pulled work - the stitches stay pulled, creating the lovely lacy effects characteristic of such stitches.
In fact, very little of the fabric sold in major stores is true linen woven from the fibres of the flax plant. Many of the fabrics available for cross stitch are mixtures, including some man-made fibres. However, in my opinion, pure linen provides the best quality and most versatile foundation for the majority of embroidery projects. As Jane Greenoff says in her book Cross stitching on Linen, I can think of nothing better than to settle down with a piece of fine evenweave linen, a good selection of thread and a gold-plated needle.
For more information on stitching on linen, see the Cross Stitch Guild’s book, Cross Stitching on Linen: Favourite Flowers by Jane Greenoff, available from the Stitchers' Market.
