How To Make Clothing Material From Flax - Survival Manual
Flax is an annual plant. Flax is easy to grow and requires little watering or attention. The Flax plant is ready to harvest when it has grown to about 3 or 4 feet tall. When raising Flax you will need to decide if you want to maximize seeds for oil or material for clothing or linen. If for clothing/linen then you should harvest earlier before the seed is at its maximum oil content and before the fiber begins to deteriorate.
You will know the Flax plants are ready for harvest for fiber when the stem begins to turn yellow. To harvest, pull the stems from the ground and don't cut if possible.
Retting is the next step and involves placing bundles of Flax in water. The more stagnant the water source, the more abundant the bacteria and the faster the retting process. Weighted down Flax bundles placed in ponds will ret in a few days and stink. If placed in cleaner flowing water the process will take up to a couple of weeks.
After retting, take a dull piece of wood resembling a very large butter knife and rub the strips length-ways. This is a process called scuthing and it breaks down and helps separate the fibers. Scutching usually involves scraping the length of the fibers as they hang vertically as if you are combing hair. Scutching is simple but very labor intensive if done by hand and it can take all day to process 15-20 pounds of Flax. If the retting process wasn't complete it would take even longer.
The next step separates the fibers by combing them through a bed of nails that splits and polishes the fibers. You will lose some of the shorter fibers in this process. Don't worry, that is normal and expected.
Dampen the Flax and spin by hand using a distaff. A distaff is simply a vertical pole that attaches to a spinning wheel. The fibers are hung here and it helps keep the fibers from tangling. Spinning the Flax fiber together (combining multiple fibers into a twisted single fiber) to form yarn then wind the yarn onto a spool.
Linen yarn is generally woven into sheets by interlacing them both horizontally and vertically, usually on a loom. Learn how to Weave!
