Making Linsey-Woolsey

Making Linsey-Woolsey. . Caroline Brinegar had to plan ahead for many months to make a garment. She made her family's clothes from a fabric called linsey-woolsey that she wove on her loom. Linsey-woolsey is woven from wool yarn and linen (flax) thread. The wool made the fabric warm and the flax made it strong. , In mid-spring Caroline planted her flax field near his spot close to her house. She sheared the sheep that she kept in the field nearby to have wool ready to card and spin. , The Brinegars harvested the flax in the fall when it turned yellow. They pulled it up by the roots and let it dry in the sun. Then they retted the flax by soaking it in water for about three days, or leaving it out in the dew and rain for several weeks, until the outer coating softened. They dried it again until it was brittle. , To process the flax for spinning, the Brinegars first broke the dried flax on a flax break. This process breaks the woody matter (boon) into small pieces and separates it from the long fibers. They used a scutching bat and board to scrape off the boon and straw. Combing the long fibers through the teeth of a hackle removed any remaining pieces of boon and smoothed the fibers. The short pieces of flax caught in the hackle's teeth are called "tow" and could be used to make rough "tow sacks." , Caroline spun the flax into linen thread and wool into yarn on her spinning wheel. To prepare the wool, Caroline and her daughters carded it on toothed carding combs to smooth out the tangles. , Caroline warped her loom with the spun flax, threading individual linen threads through the eye of each heddle and each slot in the reed. , Finally, she could weave her linsey-woolsey. She passed the shuttle carrying the wool between the warp threads as she raised and lowered them with the foot pedals.