Reenactors spin their skills in Harmony
HARMONY — Learning how the native plant flax was turned into soft and strong linen fabric in the days of old is quite the vocabulary lesson.
Karen Parsons is a volunteer with Harmony Weavers’ Cabin, which is a historic log building on Mercer Street where items woven using looms of centuries past are available for purchase.
On Saturday, Parsons and several other volunteers--all dressed in 18th-century garb--held a flax-to-linen demonstration along the sidewalk beside the historic cabin.
Parsons and the others demonstrated for fascinated passersby how the tall, reedy flax plant was dried, then “retted” on a wooden, hand-operated break machine that smashes the hardened, dry flax to break off the unusable, woody parts.
“What we want is the flax fiber that surrounds the woody core,” she said.
The original result resembles straw, which is then “scutched,” or scraped with an elongated piece of dull wood to remove any remaining woody material from the dried flax plant.
The wispy fiber from the flax plant is then put through three “hackels,” which resemble wooden bases with nails protruding upwards.
The first hackel has few nails, the next has more, and the final hackel sees the flax drawn through dozens of smaller upward-facing nails.
The finest and longest pieces of flax that were hackeled are known as “line flax,” and the shorter pieces “tows,” which rhymes with “mows.”
Depending on how the flax was retted, the tows can appear almost white.
That’s where the term ”towhead“ comes from in reference to someone -- usually a small child — whose hair is white-blond.
Another tress term related to the process is “flaxen hair,” as beautiful long, blond hair was compared to flax that was retted by placing it in water, which was one way to rett flax a few centuries ago.
“If you submerge flax in fresh, running water to rett it, it will be golden,” Parsons said.
Dew retting was another method, which means leaving the flax lying in the field, where the unusable parts of the plant will rot away from the fibers that are used to make linen.
The hackeled flax fiber was then twisted into long, bulbous “stricks,” which were hung up until the fiber could be taken to the spinner, who spun it into thread.
“At this point, we declare it to be linen,” Parsons said.
Several spinners created thread from the flax fiber processed on Saturday, to the delight of those looking on.
In days gone by, the stricks would hang up in storage until winter, when spinners had time to spin it into thread.
Regarding dying the thread or fabric, Parsons said linen does not take color well.
“It takes the blue/indigo,” she said. “That’s about it.”
Parsons said most linen fabric that contains bright reds, yellows and other colors also has wool, which can easily be colored.
She said “shifts,” or simple white or wheat-colored dresses that served as the innermost piece of a woman’s ensemble, were made of linen because the fabric can be washed over and over.
Caps, scarves, aprons or other items that require more frequent washing were traditionally made of linen.
“The things that touch your body get washed most often,” Parsons said.
Outer dresses, skirts and jackets were normally more colorful because they contained wool for warmth, and were rarely washed.
Lisel Moser, Harmony Weavers’ Cabin coordinator who demonstrated making fabric on a small loom, said her mother, Susie Giuliano, started the weavers’ cabin and its band of volunteers around 2000.
“Mom wanted to show that you can still do it,” Moser said of weaving. “She’s 87 now, and still comes (to the cabin) on Sundays.”
Moser said the Harmonists that founded the borough were weavers who maintained a flock of more than 3,000 merino sheep, which was the breed that produced the finest wool.
“The Harmonists sold cloth for $10 a yard in 1806,” she said. “That would be almost $300 a yard now.”
Moser said the inability to easily get their fabric to large markets in New York City and other large venues was one reason the Harmonists picked up and moved to what is now Economy, Beaver County.
She said the Harmonists made “linsey woolsey” fabric, which was a linen/wool combination that proved both sturdy and warm for those doing the hard, outdoor work in the winter in Harmony.
“When the linsey woolsey clothes wore out, they used them to make rag rugs,” Moser said.
She said the most frequent comments or questions visitors share with the weavers are how someone many thousands of years ago thought of processing a plant into fabric, and marveling at the amount of work it takes to make linen the old fashioned way.
Historic weaving demonstrations using various textiles are held each month in temperate months by the volunteers.
“We are really attracting new people because we are having so much fun doing it,” Moser said.
Devin Swager, 21, of Rochester, Beaver County, is one of the young people who dressed in period linen clothing Saturday to help with the demonstration.
Swager explained that his ancestors were neighbors with the Harmonists in Economy and leant them their steam-powered equipment to make the weaving process faster.
His mother is a geneaologist, grandfather a history teacher, and grandmother owns and operates several spinning wheels.
Swager is fascinated with the flax-to-linen process, as it has been used throughout almost all of human history.
Ali Radcliffe, of Harmony, described the spinning process to her son Simon, 4, as weaver Nancy Wilson operated the contraption.
Her husband minded their younger son under a nearby tree, where a weaver volunteer told the story of Rumpelstiltskin, who spins straw into gold to trade for a woman’s firstborn.
“I think preserving history is a wonderful thing,” Radcliffe said. “It’s important to know how things were made in years past, before the industrial revolution.”
Inside the Harmony Weavers’ Cabin, Parsons demonstrated using a large “barn loom” to craft cotton threads on the loom and a spool of wool placed inside a “woof” into soft material to be used for towels.
“I can make a tea towel in one hour,” Parsons said.
Shoppers who visited the cabin also got to taste “switchel,” which was served to those performing hard work in the 1700s and 1800s.
The brown brew is made of molasses, ginger, cider vinegar, nutmeg and other ingredients that would get a perspiring, dehydrated worker back on his feet faster than a jug of water would.
The Harmony Weavers’ Cabin volunteers will hold another demonstration next month, weather permitting.
