What's Out There: Gardening Catalogs


The time for gardening catalogs has come! My mailbox and email overflow with flowers, veggies and blue-sky pictures of gardens twice the size of my whole urban lot. Weeds are forgotten and optimism abounds! Last year, a dye garden was planned but sadly it never actually made it out of my head and into the dirt. Similarly, this year I became interested in linen (and therefore the flax plant), but after finding out how much work was involved in processing the flax plant into a spinnable fiber, I decided to just order it online.

In looking for flax fiber, I also found rose fiber from actual roses, as well as seaweed, bamboo and tencel. I was surprised to find how many plant fibers were available to handspinners, and even more amazed when I looked into plants in textiles.

We all know cotton of course, and linen. Cotton has been around for over 5000 years, and linen more than 7000. But did you know there are about forty different fibers used commercially? It’s the plant cellulose that is used, and it can come from any part of the plant, including the leaves, stems or stalks, seed pods or even the fruit.

Piña fiber is derived from the leaves of the Spanish Red Pineapple, and is the finest of all Philippine hand-woven fabrics. Only a few weavers know how to weave it so it’s reserved for wedding dresses and other traditional cultural items. It can be combined with silk or other cellulose fibers such as Abacá, a member of the banana family in the Philippines. It was in huge demand during the 1800s, but was almost completely replaced by cotton and the weaving methods nearly lost. It is now enjoying a comeback to some extent, and the traditional weaving and embroidery methods and designs have been preserved.

Seacell is a manufactured fiber from seaweed. It’s processed and extruded, then combined with other fibers such as lyocell (from Eucalyptus trees!) to make textiles such as knits, underwear, and sportswear. It is reported to have antibacterial qualities. Europe has been experimenting in methods of commercial cultivation as it is a fast-growing renewable resource.

Like cotton and linen, hemp also has a long textile history, and is possibly the oldest plant fiber cultivated for textile use. There’s archaeological evidence that it was cultivated in Japan as far back as 12,000 years ago for both fiber and paper. There are even cave paintings depicting it’s cultivation. It was very popular in many countries for a variety of rope products, particularly during English and European colonial times and naval expansion. Artificial fibers began replacing it in the 1930s, and it was mostly banned in the 1970s. World production has remained stable at 75,000 metric tons since the 1960s.

We have probably all heard of modal, a type of rayon, but I did not know it was made from beech trees. This completely explains an undershirt I have which is made of modal, and the brand is “Body Bark.” Modal is processed under different conditions than standard rayon. It’s stronger and more stable when wet, but is softer and feels more like cotton.

While I won’t be planting flax, pineapples, bananas, or beech trees in my yard, and certainly not growing hemp, it’s amazing how creative humanity has been with plants to make clothing. Maybe I should go back to that dye garden idea. I can boil marigolds, no major processing needed!

Happy Sewing!
Leigh Wheeler
President