I wanted to try working with linen again.  The last time I wove with linen threads was at least ten years ago, and while I ended up with some pretty nice tea towels. I remember many people saying linen was a cantankerous fibre to work with.  But oh, such a beautiful fabric, with great lustre and feel.

I decided to work on a series of handwoven linen scarves.  I envision linen as a beautiful cool fabric for summer scarves.

For the first two scarves, I used Euroflax linen, in 14/2 lace weight from Louet. The cost is $25.00 per 100 gm cone, and I used one cone of natural, and one cone of caribou for two scarves.

For drama, I wound 4 inches of natural, and 4 inches of caribou, warp length 5 yards and sett at 12 ends per inch for a more open weave.

For the first scarf, I wove 12” in natural, 12” in one-inch wide stripes alternating colours, 24” in two rows natural, two rows caribou, 12” in alternating one inch wide stripes, then 12” in caribou.  Simple plain weave, beautiful results.

For the second scarf I used a clasped weft technique, 12 inches where the natural thread was pulled past the centre line to give a clear natural block, with mixed colours on the caribou side, then the middle 60 inches where the threads were alternately pulled to the natural side, then the caribou side, and the final 12 inches where a clear caribou block was achieved.

I had no problems at all working with the linen thread.

To finish, I washed in hot water in the machine, which made the scarves extremely wrinkled.  I hard pressed when damp to remove the wrinkles.  The fabric was very crisp.  I then threw the scarves in the dryer for 10 minutes with a fabric softener sheet, and the scarves came out with a soft hand.  For linen, repeated washing/pressing/drying will increase the softness over time.