Part I – How Is Linen Made?

Linen is a renowned textile, which is widely known for its sustainability and durability. Owing to its incredible elegance and highly cool texture, Pure Linen is extremely valued around the world, especially during summer. It is such a rich fabric that it maintains the uppermost place even in this era when the industry is flooded with artificial materials that are excessively low in price. 

                       Though the flax plant, that produces linen, has been cultivated around the globe but not of the same quality. The best quality linen fibre is derived from the flax plant grown in southwestern regions of Europe such as France, Belgium, and Netherlands, and sometimes from south-central countries like Italy, Ireland, and Germany. Because of its rich texture and premium quality, European linen is entitled as the most desired linen type in the world. 

Now you may be aware of the origin of this natural fabric but do you know How Is Linen Made? It is an organic yarn made from the fibres of the flax planet. Flax plant is used to make linen fibre for more than 6,000 years and it undergoes several steps before reaching your closet. Here in this article, we have summarized the entire linen production process step by step from field to fabric. 

Field To Fabric: Linen Production Process 

1. Planting

The process of linen production starts with the first step i.e., plantation of the base plant, flax. Flax plants cannot bear too warm temperatures or heat. Therefore, in order to prevent the crop from dying they are usually planted in cooler countries or during wintery times of the year. After about 3 months of growth, these plants get ready to harvest. 

2. Growing 

The growth of seeds is one of the major parts of the production process. As flax plants themselves cannot avoid the incursion of weeds in the field very effectively, farmers use tilling and herbicides to minimize the number of diminished or weakened yields in flax crops. Nowadays, it is often seen that machines are widely used for the sown process of flax seeds. 

3. Harvesting

After the seeds are completely ripened and the crop is properly grown, there happens the harvesting step. The right time to harvest the fibre plant is when the flax stems of the crop turn yellow in colour and their seeds brown. Earlier the harvesting procedure was carried out only by hand but these days this process is done using machinery as well. 

4. Fiber Separating 

Once flax stalks are harvested, they are moved further for the process of fibre separation. This step takes place via a set of machinery that pull out leaves and seeds. After this, flax’s fibrous are processed for the retting exercise that split up its outer stalk from the pulpy and woody parts. Since it is a crucial process, it needs to be accomplished with complete expertise or it can damage the delicate flax fibres to be used for textile production. 

Let us head to the next section of our series Part II – How Is Linen Made? and scroll through the remaining steps of the linen production process.