From Flax Seed to Medieval Linen Tunic

BRIEF TUNIC FACT SHEET How I Grew a Tunic by Dame Anne of Saffron Walden (aka Wendy Maurice). 13 year project from 2004-2017 to make a tunic from scratch, including learning most* of the 40 processes of growing the flax from seed, harvesting, processing to extract the fibre, spinning, weaving, and sewing the final garment. * I was a gardener and dressmaker.... Time spent: 657 hrs TOTAL Some measured, some approximated 135 hrs Growing, harvesting, and processing (Rippling, breaking, scutching, hackling) 260 hrs Spinning 207 hrs Weaving 55 hrs Sewing The tunic is all hand sewn and is loosely patterned on a shirt made for St. Louis (King Louis IX of France) while also meeting the fit and style requirements of a friend in the SCA who reciprocated in advance by making all the equipment I needed. 6,500 yards of wet spun thread with fibre processed from at least five years’ crops were used to weave 3.6 yds of fabric, weighing 1 lb 5 oz. 710 warp threads were dressed on a 36 wide Nilus Leclerc loom, sett at 20. Growing plot size averaged 90 sq ft per year or 45 sq m/y total. The linen fabric was tub-soaked in hot tap water with dish soap for 24 hours, then machine washed in hot and detergent, and agitated 15 mins twice, with no spin cycles, then rinsed twice with a little more agitation, no spin cycles. Cold mangling (traditionally done to flatten the threads thus filling in the spaces between them) was done with a marble rolling pin on my kitchen counter. It also usually gives the beautiful sheen seen on linen goods.

I have never video taped harvesting before so I thought I would add this here.

Yesterday was reveal/presentation day of the end product of my White Wolf Fian challenge. Several people congratulated me and came to see the tunic and ask questions; a couple of people said they were proud of me, one person was very excited, took lots of pictures of the tunic and it looked like read every word in my documentation.

Greetings friends and followers. This will be the penultimate post before the official final project reveal at Wassail in Shakespeare on December 2nd, barring any further hiccups. Pretty scary for me to be that definite, but things are going well at the moment. It doesn’t look very wonderful right now, hopefully it will look much better modelled by its soon-to-be owner. I still have all the seam finishing to do except the neck. I love the crowfoot detail.

The cutting is done. Now to breathe out.