Flax crop in the round with Alice Fox
6 April - 22 September 2024
Land based activity runs throughout our programme, parallel to the gallery exhibitions. A special focus for 2024 will be a crop of flax planted in the round area of our meadow from April, overseen by fibre artist, Alice Fox..
Alice Fox has an international reputation and our workshops with her last year excited the local fibre arts community, resulting in a long waiting list and promises to bring her back again soon for more.
Flax (Linum usitatissimum) has been grown for linen by many cultures worldwide over thousands of years. The nature of flax’s ‘bast’ fibres, which are long and strong, make it one of the most important fibre crops throughout history. Flax is shallow rooted and grows well in our northern European climate. There are various steps of processing to remove the spinnable fibres from the other parts of the plant. It is ready to pull up around 100 days after sowing. The seeds are removed – called ‘rippling’ – and the plants are left to ‘ret’, after which the fibre can be removed through a series of steps including breaking, skutching and hackling. This leave us with long ‘line’ fibre and the rougher ‘tow’, both of which can be spun into linen thread.
Key dates:
Saturday 6 April, 11am – 1pm – introduction to the project
Note: we had hoped to sow the flax seed on 6 April but the ground it too wet, so we are now aiming for the week of 15 April and then harvesting on 24 July to coincide with the next visit from Alice Fox and the rippling.
Seeds monitored for germination and watered in early stages of growing if dry weather
Once growing, there might be some weeding needed (volunteers)
It may all need turning a few times to make sure drying is even (volunteers)
Wednesday 24 July – pulling up the plants and rippling event – removing seeds and laying flax out in the orchard to ret.
This will need monitoring to check when it is retted enough and how long it takes will be weather dependant. Once it is retted enough it will need taking back into the pavilion to dry again (volunteers).
Weekend 21-22 September – flax processing weekend workshop. For more information about this workshop and to book a place click here
Come along and help to process the Kestle Barton flax with artist Alice Fox. Learn about the different stages of growing and processing, taking the harvested and retted flax plants through a series of refining stages – breaking, skutching and hackling – to fibre that can then be spun into linen thread.
