Dear friends, valued customers, fellow textile-workers and crafters,
dear colleagues in the media! It comes a little late but it comes: Our Spring – Newsletter which I hope you enjoy much and pass on to many!
Blues Galore
“A sailor went to sea, to see what he could see. But all that he could see was the bottom of the deep blue sea…”
We want our valued customers to see a lot more than the poor sailor when it comes to blue!
Blue linen has always been a bit of a “come and go” – at the moment it’s very “come”, we have quite a number of orders in the various shades we make.
There has been a little bit of confusion regarding what exactly we stock in blue linen. Many people asked for (and hopefully received) swatches.
We thought it makes sense to list all the blue linens we make and stock for 2021. We won’t put pictures with this – no matter how good, colours often give an untrue impression. If you are not sure which blue you want – just ask for samples again.
The ones we list here are the ONLY ones we keep at this point.
Deep Navy
Is our darkest one – a full – bodied shade, much richer than most navy fabrics you will find. Its machine – woven and medium weight (close to our “Derrylane”). Full width, the cloth has a multitude of uses.
Indigo Rich
Is slightly more blue in its appearance and the finishers gave it a lovely touch. It is as versatile and of the same weight as the deep one.
Deep Navy Hound’s tooth
A unique linen, we are just after reproducing a batch of it.
Woven in navy over low bleach white Clarks overdyed it in a real deep tone navy. As a result the pattern remains visible, the cloth looks absolutely stunning.
Royal Blue
Another machine woven linen, the tone is – as all our colours – not RAL standard, rather an “invention” by myself. Good crisp finish on the cloth.
“Sinton Blue Double Twill”
That’s our own name for a hand – woven linen. You’ll go a long way to find a fabric like it. I used old stock yarn spun by the legendary Thomas Sinton who also dyed it in a beautiful dark blue. I set the loom in “double twill”, the fabric shines and is very strong (8s lea yarn). LIMITED EDITION!
This noble gathering of blues is completed by our Pale Blue. Slightly lighter weight linen woven on the power loom.
All the described fabrics are in good stock as we write this – they are the only blue ones we stock at the moment.
New Random warp hand-woven linen
William Ross of Belfast was one of the famous industrial linen spinners in Ireland. He stopped his operation in 2009 – much to the sadness of many weavers and knitters.
We purchased quite a lot of his yarn which will soon come to an end.
To honour the good and numerous colours he came up with I just finished a limited edition of hand-woven random warped cloth (the warp is made of 18s two plie).
We wefted a single ply peach coloured yarn (2 threads in the shuttle) which gives the unusual fabric a slightly hazy appearance.
Minimalistic finishing keeps the rustic character. The interest is very big, I suppose the coming week will sell this linen out.
Yarn for Sale
This might surprise some of our readers: We are actually offering a (limited) quantity of yarn for sale. When we purchased the remaining yarn of a couple of weavers who retired the large lot (ca. 20 tonnes) of linen yarn was accompanied by some prime Egyptian cotton and some wool.
I can’t see us using it all and people ask for yarn all the time – so we have made a selection of good quality yarn which can be bought. Give us a shout very soon, I know it won’t last long!
Finally a few bits of information from outside the weaving shed:
“Willow 3”
Since Fiona’s daughter Willow celebrated her 2nd birthday here at Flax Mill (what a gathering it was!!) she maintains that her age is 3 – the many visitors must have gone to her head!
No further details here – just have a look!
Love over Gold
Marion