Linen Fiber Part I

My newest Arts and Science project is a study of Medieval Fibers. My documentation will be a history of where and when the fiber was used and also how it was processed. I will have fibers, spun samples and woven samples to accompany all of the fibers I cover in the documentations. I will post about these fibers as I work on them. The original motivation for this project was to make a display of period fibers and I figured I might as well also make it an Arts and Science project. It has been a great learning experience and I have found out some really cool information. But of course the most fun is to work with the fibers.

 

So here is Flax which when it is woven will magically become Linen.

 

I would like to process my own small quantity of flax from scratch someday, but that will be another Arts and Science project entirely. For now I am using some commercially processed flax I purchased from Halcyon Yarn.

 Singles

 

I purchased a pound of it and since it is a large quantity I have decided to spin it on my Ladybug wheel. I am wet spinning it, which means I am dipping my fingers in water to smooth out the fiber after I have drafted it. I am so surprised at how thin I am able to spin it. Spinning flax is quite a different experience from spinning wool. It feels like straw and you would think that it would be difficult to join the fibers to the spun single but it is actually pretty easy. I have been really enjoying working with it.

 

Singles ready for plying

 

Plied yarn with a quarter for reference

 

 

plied yarn is 17 WPI. It needs to be scoured then dyed.

 

 

I am going to set aside some of the unspun flax, along with 25 yards of spun linen and a small woven sample to go with the Arts and Science project. I plan to dye the rest of it up using synthetic dye (natural dye do not work as well on linen) and then weave up a small plaid table cloth.

 

I still have some more to spin then on to the dying and weaving. Stay tuned!

 

Byzantine under tunic

 

In the Kingdom of Acre, when a Sovereign is going to be crowned Queen (or King) they enter the church in a plain white shift with their hair loose and the during the ceremony the church officials dress them in ceremonial clothes. This plain white under tunic is sometimes embellished with white work embroidery. It was my pleasure to do this work on the tunic for our current Queen Persephene for her coronation.

She has a Byzantine persona so before I did any stitching I did some research to find out what were some common Byzantine motifs. I also wanted to incorporate her heraldry if I could. I came up with the following design.

 

The Hippocampus is part of her heraldry. The rest was based on designs I saw repeated over and over in Byzantine mosaics.

 

 

Here is the design sketched out on the tunic and the hoop ready to go on the first motif. I used white DMC floss on heavy weight linen fabric. Silk would have been nicer but I wanted her to be able to wash it with no worries. I marked the linen with a regular #2 pencil which easily came out in the wash after it was done. (always test a swatch first!)

 

The petals on the flower like design were done in satin stitch.

 

The outline and crosses on the motif were done in back stitch

 

 

The circles were done in split stitch. If I had it to do again I would use a tear away interfacing while stitching to keep the fabric at even tension. I had planned to do it originally and even bought the interfacing but thought I would be good enough without it. It turns out with this much embroidery in a circle really warped the fabric in the center of the circle no matter how carefully I stitched it.



 

This is clearly not a good picture. I have since gotten a better camera and hope to get a better picture in the future. The total project took around 40 hours to complete. It was by far the biggest embroidery project I have undertaken. Some people think that is too much work to put in for an under tunic, but I wanted to give Persephene a piece of garb that she could treasure to remind her of her coronation day.