Homegrown Flax and Cotton: Cindy Conner is a Virginia-based Certified Intermediate- Level GROW BIOINTENSIVE Teacher and a prolific author. She has written several books, including Grow a Sustainable Diet and Seed Libraries, and created the video-courses Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan and Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden based on GB techniques. Her new book Homegrown Flax and Cotton: DIY Guide to Growing, Processing, Spinning & Weaving Fiber to Cloth is based on her experience successfully growing cotton and linen and taking them all the way from seed to fiber – in the form of clothing!
The book tells you how to plant, grow, harvest, process, spin, and weave flax and cotton into cloth that you can sew into clothes, and includes directions for making flax hackles and detailed plans for a tabletop flax brake and a one-yard swift. Chapters include: Why Wear Homegrown, Homespun Clothes; Growing Flax for Linen; Retting; Breaking and Scutching; Hackling; Spinning Flax into Linen; Growing and Harvesting Cotton; The Cotton Project; How to Manage Spun Fiber; Turning Yarn Into Fabric; Clothes to Make; Guilds, Fiber Festivals and the Fibershed Movement; Spirituality of Handspun Cloth—plus a glossary, a resources section and a full index. Homegrown Flax and Cotton is 152 pages, with many full-color photos. Created with love and caring over many years, it's a bargain at $29.95 for a signed copy, available from Cindy's website, homeplaceearth.com/book-and-dvds. You can find out more about Cindy's work on her blog Homeplace Earth, and read our 2018 article about her here. We’re proud of you, Cindy! ♥ top | Newsletter Home |Table of Contents| Archive
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From the back of the
book: “Grow your
own sustainable
clothes! From seed to
shirt, Cindy Conner
shows you how to
plant, grow, harvest,
process, spin, and
weave cotton and
flax into cloth from
which you can sew
your own clothes. And
since cotton and flax
are made from plants,
when your clothes'
usefulness has passed
they can also return
to the environment without causing harm--a truly
renewable and sustainable option for clothing. Whether
you live in colder climates where flax can thrive, or
warmer climates where cotton does best, there is a
sustainable option (or two, if you live in the temperate
zone) for you. And it takes much less space than you
would think; a backyard garden will do! This complete
guide includes in-depth instructions on growing
and harvesting, preparing the fiber for spinning, the
spinning process for each fiber; the basics of weaving
cloth; and suggestions on patterns and how to weave
the pieces you need for clothing, and how to sew your
woven pieces together. Cindy has been growing her
own clothes for years and teaches the process in classes,
so she includes all of her knowledge on potential pitfalls
and how to avoid them in her thorough instructions on
each phase. You can grow your own flax and cotton
and make clothes to your own style preferences. It's
time to take the next step in sustainable living and make your own clothes in breathable and comfortable
natural cotton and flax grown in your own backyard!”