RE: mastodon.social/@climatenewsno…
"But beneath its malleable folds lies a nasty business. Commercialized by the chemical giant DuPont in the mid-1900s, the process of making polyester involves superheating two petroleum-based chemicals — ethylene glycol (also used in antifreeze) and terephthalic acid (commonly used in plastic bottles) — and extruding the mixture through tiny holes to form yarn. In 2015, this process was estimated to produce as much annual carbon pollution as 180 coal-fired power plants. As the resulting polyfabrics are woven, washed, treated, and sewn into garments, they continually shed plastic microfibers."
What your cheap clothes cost the planet.A global supply chain built for speed is leaving behind waste, toxins, and a trail of environmental wreckage. #ClimateChange
grist.org/business/what-your-c…
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Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
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Sini Tuulia
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Greg Johnston
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Greg Johnston • • •Greg Johnston
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Greg Johnston • • •@GPJohnston It used to be so common that even the words bedlinens and table linens and linen closet came from... Everything that wasn't wool or leather being linen. Everything!
Colonisation and slavery made cotton so much cheaper that it fell out of use in a lot of places. It's a great shame, it's wonderful.
crab
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •@GPJohnston it's kind of wild the degree to which linen and flax have disappeared from the public consciousness in under a century.
flax used to be one of the most common crops here and there are still tons of place names that refer to it, but it's just... not grown anymore and nobody wears linen.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to crab • • •@operand So many words and concepts! I just read that the word "lining" comes from how you'd line the insides of clothes with linen...
There's also tow-headed from the chaff of linen processing, and flaxen hair, and all kinds of things.
It used to be everywhere!
crab
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to crab • • •@operand Fabric used to be such an important and huge part of all our lives. Still is, but just made more invisible.
"Woven into the fabric of our lives" is what I could have typed. There are so many sayings!
The fabric of the universe! Worn thin! Patchwork. Unravelling. Homespun quality. Spinster. I could probably sit here and come up with other ones all day
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Greg Johnston
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Greg Johnston • • •@GPJohnston Freshly washed and unironed linen can feel a bit rough and will be skrinkly, sort of wrinkled and shrunken despite not really shrinking. The fibres just pull together in a way, like crumpled paper but much finer. Steaming it and wearing it softens it again, though.
Freshly washed and ironed linen feels a lot like silk, but stronger and stiffer, and after a little bit also soft. A lot depends on the quality of linen and the way the fabric was made, but ironed linen is by far the most comfortable thing I've ever worn. There are very coarse kinds of linen, like sack cloth, but also soft and delicate weaves that feel like a cloud!
In general it's breathable and nicely draping, with more texture than cotton but not itchy.
Greg Johnston
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Kathmandu
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •@GPJohnston
Following up on the 'different grades': in an attic, we found a linen table scarf, at least 100 years old. It was hand-woven and probably hand-processed.
The fabric was thick, close to 2mm, but it draped over my hand like cooked noodles. It had a subtle shine. Didn't wrinkle at all. It was like no other fabric I've ever seen or touched.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Kathmandu • • •TheJen will not comply
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to TheJen will not comply • • •@TheJen It's wonderful! I still have colourful cotton sateen bedlinens (heh) because I've accrued them in so many nice prints, but have been eyeing linen sheets for a while... I do sleep exclusively in linen nightdresses so what's against my skin is mostly linen anyway. 😄 It's wonderful!
I also have a bunch of chemise tops and such that I've made from old linen nightdresses, as it's the elbows, shoulder blades and underarm that always give up first... But the body of the dress is still good fabric to reuse and so I have. So soft!
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •I must, however, caution you about shenanigans around linen!
The nice, good quality linen is made of the long long fine fibres of the plant, and this is one of the most pleasant and wonderful fabrics I've handled in my life.
But during processing, and if the plant was harvested improperly, there ends up being a lot of broken up, cut off or scuffed away bits of short staples of linen, tow. "It's still linen, right?" says some unscrupulous bastard who's happy to sell this trash at the same price.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •If you've ever bought linen that wrinkles a lot but then goes lax, or sheds just a bucket-load of lint every single time you wash it... It's likely that bastards sold off their tow to other bastards to make more linen without caring about the lower quality than it should be. And asked for the same fucking price. Horrible!
Linen sheds more lint than cotton at first, this is true, but it's not supposed to DISSOLVE. 😆 If it's cheaper than it should be and from China, it's likely a bit shit!
La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •@LCdPL Yeah, it does make sense in a way, there's a lot more cotton processing machinery than there is linen... You don't even need to cut the fibres necessarily, because there ends up being so much of the shorter ones anyway. But the end result is just not very good either way.
If you can find linen made in Belgium, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, those are old old linen producing countries that still make it properly! If you don't mind paying a lot, Sartor Bohemia also sells Czech linen, I've bought it before and it's lovely... Though it's much cheaper from Estonia to me. 😄
sartorbohemia.com/european-lin…
EUROPEAN LINEN FABRIC – quality from the heart of Europe - SARTOR BOHEMIA
www.sartorbohemia.comLa compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •@LCdPL The nice Estonian linen I buy from a Finnish shop is pretty cheap in comparison to many, and while it's very very nice to wear and sew with, I'm pretty sure some of the qualities have a mix of long and short, as the different fabrics behave a bit differently. And long & short isn't terrible either, it just isn't quite as nice as the very very nicest!
(The shop no longer delivers outside of Finland without special request, otherwise I'd link it!)
La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •@LCdPL Enjoy: pellavamaailma.fi/category/2/p…
I've been ordering for uhhhh close to 20 years now I think, and have been happy every single time but one - I needed a huge amount of continuous lace and they ran out so I got it in bits instead, but that's the only time I've ever had complaints!
Pellavakankaat
FINKONIA pellavakauppaLa compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •zombiecide 馬雄
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •do you have any idea if I could try to use the Finnish website to order fabrics within the EU?
Sini Tuulia
in reply to zombiecide 馬雄 • • •@zombiecide Yeah, I figure they only made the English website once and then never updated it with all of their stock, the Finnish one has a lot more stuff and not even all pages are translated at all! Like the terms of service. 😅
Currently they only deliver to Finnish addresses, but the people running it have usually replied to emails pretty quick, so it's possible you could ask them directly? It's something of a hassle to post outside of Finland even inside the EU, but they might be willing to do that anyway.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia @La compagnie des petits lutins lol, I've bought some very nice linen from Italy for a shirt¹ as a treat once, and to me Sartor's linen is the *cheap* one :D
they are both lovely in different ways, however
¹ which ended up being two shirts, because there happened to be a end-of-roll that was too short for the 1700 shirt I wanted to make but just enough for a shirtwaist, and the fabric seller knows me too well :D
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Sini Tuulia
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •@valhalla The regular Sartor linen is cheap for linen, but it also doesn't tell where it's from and usually if it's Oeko-Tex... And they raised the per metre price of the Bohemian linen by 4-9€ depending on fabric type, which is kind of a hike. 😄 Like, sure. That's okay to pay for European linen, but it's also up to three times more expensive than cotton!
I might be spoiled by being able to find nice European linen for much less, though.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Sini Tuulia • •@Sini Tuulia uops, the Bohemian linen is more expensive than I remembered, indeed
but maybe that's also because up to now I've only bought it during one of their big sales, that helps :D
anyway, even at full price it's still cheaper than the Italian linen from my local shop :D
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Kymberly
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Kymberly • • •Kymberly
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Kymberly • • •Hal Pomeranz
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Hal Pomeranz • • •@shezza_t
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Linen, or rather the knitted material made from flax, became my hot weather wardrobe of choice after a happy random charity shop purchase of a nice top.
It’s amazing stuff for keeping you cool, keeping the sun off you, and not making this Northern Irish acclimated person unsociably sweaty on foreign holidays.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to @shezza_t • • •@shezza_t You might mean woven (which is what linen is as a general term) and not knitted, as linen thread or yarn is somewhat unwilling to be nicely knit into comfortable garments without becoming bulky or rough, but yes
(If you didn't, apologies! Many people just don't know what the words mean!)
@shezza_t
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Honestly, I’ve no idea of the proper technical terms.
The flax tops and “jumpers” I have feel closer in texture to knitwear rather than fabric. I don’t know how they were made, but I do know I love them.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to @shezza_t • • •@shezza_t
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •If you can tell me how to describe the fabric in these photos, you will greatly aid my secondhand searching :)
The fabric in my Irish linen trousers is the traditional woven type. Different from this, but equally wonderful.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to @shezza_t • • •@shezza_t That's without a doubt a knit. 😄 What I'd use to ask for it or look it up would be "100% linen knit"
If you look at it closely you can tell it's made of tiny tiny little loops that interlock.
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •@shezza_t
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to @shezza_t • • •Em
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Em • • •@Em It's not better or worse to wear in winter for warmth than cotton, but certainly you can wear the same linen clothes a lot longer than if they were cotton... Wool is just much warmer!
But I am wearing linen right now and all I've done is just layer more of it on and I'm quite comfortable, but all of my coats that I'd pull on for Finnish winter are either wool (or blends) or have a batting layer inside them!
There used to be this fabric that was a blend of linen and wool and it looks lovely, but I don't think it's easy to find anywhere now.