Alice Fox: Flax Processing Workshop

A 2-day non-residential workshop with fibre artist, Alice Fox, learning how to prepare flax grown at Kestle Barton for spinning

Land based activity runs throughout our programme, parallel to the gallery exhibitions. A special focus for 2024 has been a crop of flax planted in the round area of our meadow, overseen by fibre artist, Alice Fox..

Alice Fox has an international reputation and our workshops with her last year excited the local fibre arts community, resulting in a long waiting list and promises to bring her back again soon for more.

Flax (Linum usitatissimum) has been grown for linen by many cultures worldwide over thousands of years. The nature of flax’s ‘bast’ fibres, which are long and strong, make it one of the most important fibre crops throughout history. Flax is shallow rooted and grows well in our northern European climate. There are various steps of processing to remove the spinnable fibres from the other parts of the plant. It is ready to pull up around 100 days after sowing. The seeds are removed – called ‘rippling’ – and the plants are left to ‘ret’, after which the fibre can be removed through a series of steps including breaking, skutching and hackling. This leave us with long ‘line’ fibre and the rougher ‘tow’, both of which can be spun into linen thread.

On the weekend 21-22 September, Alice Fox will be at Kestle Barton to offer a non-residential 2-day workshop: Come along and help to process the Kestle Barton flax with artist Alice Fox. Learn about the different stages of growing and processing, taking the harvested and retted flax plants through a series of refining stages – breaking, skutching and hackling – to fibre that can then be spun into linen thread.