Flax

Linen is made out of flax. Flax used to grow in the fields all around us. It has a beautiful blue flower.

People used to harvest the flax and then soak it in water for a long time in a process called retting (or rotting). It has a very strong smell.

We scanned some flax that plumbers use today for sealing joints.

We don't grow flax anymore in Ireland, but we tried to mirror some of the processes used in the linen industry by making paper. Flax is still used today to make paper. it is useful for making paper strong because of its long fibres.

We made some pictures from the flax using photoshop.

We got some plumber's flax and dyed it using natural dyes.

Here is a picture of Mark's flax ready for dying, we called it a mouse!

We had to soak the "mice" in water before dying them

This is the steamy dyebath...

We used Brazilwood for deep red, Madder for fire red Brazilwood for deep blue and Weld for yellow. We had to boil the flax in the dye for a long time and we had to dry it over the radiators.

Here is a picture of Darren working with the flax dyed with logwood, a beautiful blue.

 

On the table you can see some of the paper we made using the water from the dyebaths and other things we collected, like elderberries and.....flax!

Here is a picture of the comb they used to straighten the flax fibres to make it ready for spinning...

and here is the flax on the mastiff ready to be spun...

Here is some paper we made with flax fibres in it...