Experimenting with flax for fiber
I first grew flax in 2022, when I needed raw material for my thesis at the Estonian Academy of Arts. A 70-square-meter flax field was prepared at the Estonian Agricultural Museum, and I received valuable help from textile students at Pallas University of Applied Sciences.
Since then, I have continued this collaboration each year – inviting textile students to sow, harvest, and process flax at the museum. This hands-on process provides them with a holistic understanding of bast fibers, the natural cycles that influence them, and the journey from plant to textile.
Below is an overview of our 2024 flax-growing season.
Sowing 16th of May 2024
Seeds: Avian
Quantity: 1 kg
Field size: 70 square meters
The field was prepared by the museum. The students scattered the seeds evenly on the field, then raked them into soil and lastly pressed the soil surface with their feet. As the weather was quite dry, we also watered the field a bit.
Harvesting 4th of September 2024
The plants were ready to be picked. The field was a little uneven, some plants had turned too brown, but most of them were in the right stage (the stems without leaves and in greenish-yellow colour).
We picked the plants, removed seeds and set them evenly on the ground for dew retting.
Flax fibers grown in Estonian Agricultural Museum, processed and spun into yarn by textile students from Pallas University of Applied Sciences in 2024.
The yarn is rough but it is spun by students that had their first time working with a spinning wheel. This is a very good result and the fact that the fibers are also grown and processed by the students makes the material even more valuable.
The students were able to witness the creation of textile material from seed to yarn.
