The Festival of Natural Fibres 2022. Part 2.
What could the processing part of the fibre value chain look like if we were to be more regenerative? A retelling of the festival's panel discussions, and what charkha spinning is.
The Festival of Natural Fibres was hosted for the sixth year by Freeweaver Saori Studio and Khadi London at Craft Central in South East London in October 2022 over two days.
It’s aims were to create a welcoming space for all those enthusiastic, entranced, or simply curious about natural fibres and brought together a community of farmers, researchers, designers, makers, activists and entrepreneurs to demonstrate and discuss the emerging conversations and technologies in the space.
Each day of the festival focussed on a specific aspect of natural fibres; day one was regarding the value chain - the growing, processing, making and designing, and day two regarded the wider systemic issues, revolving mostly around regenerative economies.
For the purpose of such a lot of information, I’ve split the retelling into a few parts: part one is the growing part of the value chain, part two is the processing part of the value chain, including a tidbit on my attempt at charkha spinning, and a snippet from the making and designing panel, and then part three is on regenerative economies, which includes some reflection on Dylan Howitt’s film about Allan Brown’s work The Nettle Dress.
This is part two, looking at the processing aspect of the natural fibre value chain.
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Processing.
The second panel of the day was moderated by Gandhian activist and generational hand-spinner, Asha Buch (also an associate of Khadi London), with panellists Rosie Bristow (Straw Into Gold), Maria (weaver and founder of MarshnMoor naturally dyed regeneratively farm wool skeins), Kitty Wilson Brown (Contemporary Hempery) and Yuli Sømme (Bellacouche natural burial shrouds).
Introductions.
Rosie Bristow has been researching the processing part of the value chain for flax fibre, something which no longer exists in the UK because everything moved to the continent; Belgium, France, parts of the Netherlands and Lithuania are now the main processing places for linen yarns and fabric in Europe (apart from China). When it comes to the UK in current times, there are hobby hand tools, but no meaty machinery, because an industrial plant would cost something like £1.2 million. So Rosie is focussing on taking hobby tools into the industry standard.
As one part of Contemporary Hempery, Kitty is experimenting with the processing steps of hemp as there isn’t much research available. A question was asked about using flax tools for hemp in order to improve the accessibility and reduce costs, and though there are similiarities in the equipment, there needs to be some variations as hemp is a chunkier straw, and so the flax breaker (blocky wooden lever) isn’t heavy enough for hemp.
Maria as both a practicing vegan and someone with autism (of course not mutually exclusive, and I believe she had specifically said autism) works to address environmentalism and mental health through her business MarshnMoor, taking regeneratively farmed wool to be spun into knitting yarn skeins that are then naturally dyed with plant pigments. Key to this is ensuring traceability so there is an awareness of how beneficial these products are to all.
Yuli Sømme founded Bellacouche (meaning ‘beautiful resting place’) to bring a connection with hand-heart-soul and the soil together. The natural burial shrouds will biodegrade with the person.
Connecting the processing to growing.
Rosie started off by explaining that the initial Straw Into Gold project involved working with George Young of Fobbing Farm in Essex to drill sow a hectare of flax seed. However, this year it is only possible to have access and time to sow a small plot in Edinburgh. Depending on your plot size - if you were to grow flax - you may need to involve volunteers (as The Super Slow Way’s Homegrown/Homespun project team did in Blackburn) because flax pulling and laying down to dew ret takes time. I’ve had 3 years of growing approximately two times 1.5 metre x 1 metre beds, and that’s enough for me.
Yuli explained how she had chosen to challenge the funereal industry - or textile industry in general - through using raw wool to create biodegradable shrouds, but to make such wool products as she does, you need to make expensive one-offs or increase production for an economy of scale. Yuli previously worked with a Devonshire mill, who were part of Axminster Carpets, but they closed down leaving only two remaining wool scouring plants - both based in Yorkshire. This meant Yuli was able to source certified organic wool, but compromised on the provenance - the shrouds are now not bioregional. To combat that issue, she buys some of Fernhill Farm’s regenerative wool, who are based in Somerset, to add something more traceable, and will on occasion purchase Dartmoor wool, though she explains it is messier as it’s full of gorse and isn’t blade-sheared (meaning by hand, unlike Fernhill).
Ewe pregnancy causes breakages in the fleece, and so along with other elements of animal welfare such as stressors from quality of life (indoors and outdoors) the wool can lack quality. If a sheep is not sheared, they run the risk of getting tangled in hedges where they like to go for eating scrub or for shelter; blade shearing is usually done twice a year to aid the animal’s movement around the land. However, all of these external factors can be detrimental to the overall quality of the wool, and if you don’t have the time or expertise or equipment to process the fleece bearing all of this in mind, then you can end up with a poorer wool - on top of a market that is already depleted in value.
Scaling up the processing.
French mills process 60-80,000 hectares of flax fibre. The smallest mill for the UK would cost £6-8 million, but this would be useless as we don’t grow enough flax to make it worthwhile. Yet, most of the flax currently grown in the UK would be classed as cottage industry, and though Flaxland in Gloucestershire do export their flax straw for processing on the continent, the majority of growers wouldn’t be able to meet the minimums to make it worthwhile. So not only would we need to collectively meet the mill cost, we’d also have to be upping our growing capacity. This is where the government really needs to step in, along with educating on the benefits of flax for other industries - it is a food source as well as fibre, can be used as a composite for a type of fibreglass, increases biodiversity, can grow in poor soil, and only requires the land 3 months of the year.
Another issue with processing here is the retting involved. Retting is a process by which the gums in the straw are broken down allowing the straw to be opened revealing the cellulosic fibre inside. Most flax is processed with water retting using biological enzymes in a closed system; previously, especially in Ireland, flax would be retted in rivers and streams, and though we see this as a natural fibre, too much of those gums going into water can cause it to stagnate and is effectively pollution. Dew retting allows the straw to break down in situ in the field, but is harder to control and so EU experts would be required to train farmers and processors here.
Processing relies on the growers.
In order to get to the processing stage, you need to have the fibre in the first place - as mentioned above in regards to scaling up flax processing. Currently we grow more linseed in the UK than flaxseed, so Rosie wants to continue experimenting with Fobbing Farm to utilise the linseed straw leftover after his harvest (which currently doesn’t do much). Linseed and flaxseed are similar varieties of the Linum family, but linseed has a shorter straw making it poorer for linen fibre, but better for food sources. Rosie believes that having more farmers and growers interested in the fibre will build resilience for re-establishing and retaining the industry.
In terms of wool, Yuli says that veganism shakes the industry. With a move to non-animal fibres (and a continuation of using synthetic fibres) there is little to no market for wool - which is why during 2020, along with a pandemic, the price hit five pence per fleece [read more on this in my visit to Brickpits Organic Farm]. The argument is that sheep are a cause of land degradation and methane emissions, but fans of sheep will extol that it is in fact the farming practices and land management that causes these issues, rather than the sheep themselves - as is evidenced by Fernhill Farm. Having an on-farm abbatoir is an additional way to not only improve animal welfare by reducing stress levels, but reduce costs too - and observe traceability.
Maria finished up by saying she had initially wanted to use linen for her business, because she is a practicing vegan and was set on using UK fibres, something which was limited five years ago when she started. However, with linen being difficult to trace, she shifted to wool, but ensures she sources from farms that evidence their animal welfare practices.
A question came from Sanne about using low grade wool for shrouds, as a way to utilise the stuff that no one else wants. I wondered about the moral perception of this - of putting a body in “dirty” wool. Yuli explained that she uses a felt cloth anyway, so no spinning or weaving is required, reducing the processing amount needed to create Bellacouche’s shrouds. However, the biggest hurdle could be in fact around the regulations that need to be observed with burial, regardless of what the deceased person is wrapped in; soil depth and management of the site are enormously important, particularly when burials tend to not be “natural” due to the preserving chemicals used on the body.
It reminded me again of how we need to have open conversations about all these elements of all of these industries if we are to collectively shift forward into something more regenerative than extractive.
Charkha spinning.
In between the first two panels of the day, I was able to participate in charkha cotton spinning with Asha Buch of Khadi London. From the outside looking in, it looks simple enough. Hold the fibre, turn the wheel and pull to twist the yarn. And that’s actually what Asha was explaining - “twist and pull”. But my thread kept breaking just as I got the knack of the twisting and angling.
Charkha refers to the spinning wheel in India, no matter the size, but the book-size charkha is the one we used in this session. As the most common Indian spinning wheel was not easy to set up or move, Gandhi held a contest in 1929 to design a spinning wheel that was small, lightweight and portable - and it was this one that he took with him to prison.
Khadi is a simple cloth made from handspun and handwoven cotton (and at that time would’ve been indigenous cotton varieties too). The availability and ease of spinning yarn at home that could then also be woven at home on backstrap or small looms, was integral to the uprising Gandhi wanted to bring about against British imperial forces.
Unfortunately it was £20 for the hour session, and because it was in the middle of the floor of the festival room and in between panels, we didn’t quite get an hour and didn’t quite get much guidance each, so it’s something I’ll have to return to with my own charkha - it requires patience.
Making and designing.
The panel included Kitty Wilson Brown (Contemporary Hempery), Morgan Amber (Morgan Amber Printing), Sarah Jerath (Caravan Sarai), Justine Lee (Ossian Knitwear Studio), Rachel Sheila Kan (Ecosystem Incubator) and Nadia Piechestein (TLZmovement).
Disappointingly I had to head off before the end of day one to work, and so missed this panel discussion on making and designing with natural fibres. Just so you have all of the information in case you find yourself on this blog, this description was taken from the Festival of Natural Fibres blog from Khadi London written by Ashna Patel.
“Each panellist brought forth their experiences with working directly with the value chain in different capacities and at different points of the chain, including engaging first-handedly with shepherds, to processing raw natural fibre themselves, to working directly with wearers to make an impact on behavioural habits in relation to clothing and textiles. They each demonstrated how design processes, especially those that have a foundation of sustainability and regeneration, are becoming more participatory and investigatory.”
After this panel, there was a rounding off to the day with a discussion on collaboration - key to embedding these practices because it really will take a village (and more) to shift the system.
![Allan Brown and Claire checking out the hemp fibre samples from Contemporary Hempery. [Credit: The Festival of Natural Fibres].](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qH_f!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F37794e80-4fc6-468c-b9e0-4482695d31f1_1620x1080.jpeg "Allan Brown and Claire checking out the hemp fibre samples from Contemporary Hempery. [Credit: The Festival of Natural Fibres].")