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…
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •reshared this
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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 • • •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
like this
Sini Tuulia e Kymberly like this.
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
Sini Tuulia likes this.
La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •@valhalla I have talked and made some research about that (the sourcing of linen and the process of production)
The best source/standard of quality I have found is the Masters of LINEN certification (allianceflaxlinenhemp.eu)
From that I have two conclusions :
1) the mills are mostly located in china, It's racist to say china production is poorly made
2) it's very difficult to find linen with long fibres. The only European mill is in France and a friend got some of their linen and it was short fibers.
A start would be to find weavers who use tread made with wet-spinning of flax. The site above have a directory.
Or try différents resselers until we found one ok.
About that, may I ask you to check the linen fabric you bought and check the staple length of the fibre ? (you pull a tread, untwist it and pull both ends until it break/unravel) All linen I have have a staple length of 3 cm max, and some are very old but the new ones are mostly cheap ones.
Page d'accueil | ALLIANCE
allianceflaxlinenhemp.euSini Tuulia
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •@LCdPL @valhalla I buy table linens, towels and such that uses Masters of Linen certified fibre, it's a Finnish loom that does jacquard woven textiles... It's very nice, but they also don't do just plain fabric, so nothing for sewing.
The issue about China, Pakistan, India etc. as a producer country is that there are MUCH more lax environmental and worker protection guarantees, and usually if it (fabric, I've never that deeply looked into the production cycle of fibres, we got taught about textile manufacturing, dyeing and finishing chemicals in school) is made there it will not be certified for anything... And very rarely will it be nice quality. And that's not because it doesn't get made! It's just that it's very profitable to keep the nice stuff for within the region use (traditional clothes, crafts etc. that people are willing to pay a lot for) and then sell the mediocre and low quality into the west with a huge markup between every single step. (This isn't limited to linen, it's what happens to fashion and fast fashion, too. Pretty much everything gets made in China for almost no pay and without many guarantees of ethics or safety, and then gets marked up when it gets shipped around and ends up in the West.)
It's not about any inherent quality about Chinese people, it's about capitalism and the convoluted unfairness of global markets and extracting the maximum amount of money from every single step!
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •@LCdPL Usually, if you see linen in a fabric store (physical or online) and it doesn't have any country of origin marked or any certifications, it's the bad quality and heavily marked up poor quality. And might be laden with toxic chemicals because nobody's really checked.
At the very least there should always be Oeko-Tex or GOTS, and country of origin, wonderful if there's Union made or Fair Trade there too. (Even if the latter only means country of weaving, it matters!)
If there's absolutely no mention of "Hey, we tried!" in the form of any of those, it's likely it was made as cheap as possible and just will not be very good. 😆 Sometimes it is nice fabric nonetheless! Touching and smelling it are good ways to know. Sometimes linen that looks okay and feels okay will smell like poison, and never get better, because it was made and transported in bad conditions.
@valhalla
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sensitive content
A stone-washed cheap Finkonia linen in sienna, a very very nice white linen from a scrap I had close by and am a little bit unsure where it came from, a coarse cheap-ish herringbone linen from (edit) a craft fair, mother brought it to me as a gift!
The sienna one drapes beautifully and wear very well (I'll edit in a hashtag to show the clothes once I remember what it is) and is lovely... The white linen is exceptionally fine and nice, and what I usually think of when I say really nice linen - a mix of longer and shorter fibres! It does get made! The coarse one is still good for what it's good for, but it's not good for everything. 😄
I had a really hard time unravelling any of these, the thread really did not want to come apart!
@valhalla
Sini Tuulia
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •@LCdPL I think the nice white linen is either from a GOTS certified white bedsheet that was made in maybe Hungary... Or one of the Finkonia linens, I bought like five different varieties of white linen from them a while ago, to compare them. And even from the same loom, there's many different kinds. In any case, super nice, but not terribly expensive in either case, and I wasn't surprised to find it to be that quality.
@valhalla
La compagnie des petits lutins
in reply to Sini Tuulia • • •Sensitive content
Sini Tuulia
in reply to La compagnie des petits lutins • • •Sensitive content
@LCdPL You're welcome! I had no idea it was something so rare!
If you're curious, Lapuan Kankurit (Masters of Linen certified) also wrote something about attempting to GROW and process linen in Finland again. 😭 It's still done in small scale apparently, but industrially? Wow that would be so nice!
Here's a bunch of links to linen things I've made. The brown thread comes from this fabric, unironed after sewing in these photos: eldritch.cafe/@sinituulia/1141…
This is a stiff, heavy 240gms linen I made into a jacket, beautiful material and lovely to work with even if it wasn't the most expensive: eldritch.cafe/@sinituulia/1105…
And I *think* this is the same fabric as the nice linen thread was, in any case it drapes beautifully: eldritch.cafe/@sinituulia/1150…
Sini Tuulia
2025-03-18 15:46:07
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 • • •Sini Tuulia
Unknown parent • • •@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.
Sini Tuulia
Unknown parent • • •@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.