History:

Though the warp is cotton, this hanging is done in the style of a ‘linsey-woolsey.’ A linen, or cotton, warp is the foundation beneath a woolen weft. Though cotton is widespread now, linen used to be more easily accessible in the mountains, and was the second most common fiber behind wool. Linen comes from the flax plant and requires several steps to turn it into thread. After harvesting and drying, flax must be “heckled” or broken up. It’s then combed through to get all the dry, broken pieces out and leaving the fiber clean and ready to spin!

Lula Norton shared some of her knowledge on flax:

“The plants were pulled by hand when they became a light brown (if allowed to become too ripe the fibers lose their softness and shine) and tied in bundles and laid in the sun to dry. When dry, the seeds were removed by a coarse comb; this process was called rippling. The flax was put in still water to ferment. This process was called retting. It removes certain adhesives which bind the fibers to each other and to the woody stems. When dry again the wood part becomes brittle and easily removed. The fiber is freed from the stems by two operations, breaking and scuthing. Breaking crushes the stems, scuthing removes broken pieces of the stems. The fibers are then separated into long and short fibers. The long fibers are used for finer materials, the short fibers for cords, twine, and coarse materials. The final process is combing the fibers straight and this is called hackling.”