Fooling with Fiber

At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).

Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.

On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.

At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).

...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).

E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.

(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)

Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.

...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

Ball of carbonized thread of linen or nettle dating from the Middle Neolithic (3,900 - 3,300 BC) from the Marin-Epagnier / Préfargier site, France. After Joëlle Bregnard Munier/Romain Pigeaud [2000x1500]

Blue-Faced Leicester (or BFL) wool comes from the English Longwool tradition, developed from other Leicester breeds in the early twentieth century. This sheep grows fine, silky, curly, and quite long locks! These spin into lustrous and durable yarn that remains soft enough to be worn next to skin, great for hard-wearing sweaters, socks, and woven fabrics.

Question: why did you personally decide to get the lanolin out? I know some people prefer to keep it in so I'd like to hear your motivation.

​honestly, the biggest reason is that i tried spinning some of it with the lanolin in, and i didn't enjoy the experience. maybe it wasn't warm enough (the wool was in full sun, but it was probably about fifteen degrees out), maybe i did it wrong, maybe it's just me, but it just wasn't my jam. i tend to do very minimal fibre management when i spin, and the fibre with lanolin in didn't draft as evenly. i'm guessing it varied with a couple factors—how greasy that particular part of the fleece was, how warm that particular bit of wool was—but it meant that sometimes it wanted draft out very quickly, and sometimes it was a little more reluctant.

i have to reiterate that this might be specific to my personal spinning style—there's always twist in my drafting zone, and i'm not really interested in doing a bunch of pinch-pull-twist motions with the hand that isn't holding the fibre, so i want my prep to behave predictably.

the other reason is that i love playing with colour, so some of the fibre is likely to be dyed before we spin it, and you have to remove the lanolin before you can dye it. sorting it all out and guessing what i'd want to dye vs what i'd want to keep natural sounded like a nightmare, so i didn't do it.

i feel like it's sort of held up as like, Peak Spinning, sometimes, but it seems that plenty of esteemed spinners don't hold with spinning in the grease if it's avoidable, either. i'm sure there are some, but i think that they're a minority, or at least they certainly have been in my reading. alden amos's big book of handspinning has a section on this subject: 'grease wool, and why you want to wash before spinning'. it opens like this:

Several traditions surround the use of wool, and one is the concept of spinning in the grease, which means making yarn from unwashed wool. Aside from being a grand occasion to whomp on a sacred cow, a discussion of spinning in the grease serves to introduce more advanced aspects of fiber preparation. In honor of those who champion spinning in the grease, we list three reasons for doing so: (1) You do not know any better. (2) You do not have any water. (3) Your customer demands it. Here are reasons for not spinning in the grease: (1) Clean wool is easier to card. (2) Grease wool is impossible to comb. (3) Unwashed wool may be contaminated with all sorts of unpleasant things.

all of which i have to say i agree with. i produced some mediocre rolags and top with the unwashed wool, and spun a chunk of yarn that was well enough, but it was more work and less enjoyable for me than doing otherwise, so it's probably not an experiment i'll be repeating.

I do want to push back slightly on Alden’s assertion that you can’t comb greasy fleece - you can. You simply need the correct setup. In fact that’s how it was done commercially in the later medieval period.

England’s dominance of the wool market, which started in the 13th century and continued for a few hundred years, was brought about in part by the innovation of spinning and weaving in the grease. It was a relatively simple development but it catapulted English cloth into the continent and financed the kingdom through at least a couple of wars.

That’s not to say the wool was unwashed, though. They simply washed the sheep before shearing, as opposed to washing the fleece after it had been removed from the sheep.

The wool was then combed with heated combs - the wool combers kept spares in a brazier near their combing stations so they could swap out cold combs for hot ones. We have several manuscript images of the process.

There’s also record of oil or fat (goose fat was mentioned several places) being added to the wool as it was being combed, if it didn’t have enough in it. This seems to have been the norm in much of Western Europe at the time, and even up through the 16th century and longer.

But! Fleeces as a whole were much coarser back then. What they called finewool we would call a medium, at best. Fine wools such as we have today functionally didn’t exist until after Spain developed the merino.

...

...between the trousseau she provided, and the extra clothes, and jewels bought for young Caterina by her groom’ excited family—which included furs and two sixty-florin strings of pearls—the bride would have worn 400 florins’ worth of wealth ($400,000) on her body as she walked across the city to her husband's home. This was not simple conspicuous consumption: all Florence would see the bridal procession and estimate the power of these families by the wealth they saw. By supplementing the trousseau provided by the Strozzi with even more costly robes and pearls, the Parenti family—new to the popolo and excited to secure a bride from one of the ottimati—was making a modest dowry look larger, and once the bride reached her new home, the pearls and other reusable materials would be resold to buy equipment for the newlyweds' silk business.

Returning to our auto industry simile, for this wedding dress think of the kind of Lamborghini that sets the whole town gossiping when someone parks it on the street, except that it can be trivially disassembled and the parts turned back into investment capital. For the pearls, think stock market shares or savings bonds, high-value investments infinitely resalable. Indeed, the choice of pearls as a form of display was itself strategic: costly embroideries and cut gemstones were both unique and recognizable, so if one resold a particular ruby or yard of brocade, others would recognize it and comment, Ah, X-family is poor enough to need to sell! Not so the smooth homogeneity which made pearls as anonymous as coins, and who would notice if a string that had sixty pearls on it yesterday today has fifty-eight?"

I wanted to make a post I could copy and paste and or link when I see folks asking where to buy fabrics when Joann is gone. I sew a lot, generally between 100-200 items a year and I don't do it on a big budget. Stores are not in a particular order.

Notions:

Wawak.com - start here, mostly stay here. Wawak is a supplier for professional sewing businesses and have the prices that show it. I will not pay for gutermann Mara 100 anywhere else. I buy buttons, tools, thread, and most elastic here.

Stitch Love Studio - this is where I buy lingerie supplies https://www.etsy.com/shop/StitchLoveStudio?ref=yr_purchases

Fabric:

Fabric Mart - this is one where you want to sign up for emails and never buy unless its on sale. They run different sales every day and they rotate. Mostly deadstock fabrics but I buy more from here than anywhere else. Fantastic customer service and if you watch you can get things like $6 wool suiting or $4 cotton jersey. https://fabricmartfabrics.com/

Fabrics-Store - again, buy the sales not the full price. Sign up for the emails but redirect them to a folder because it is TOO MANY. They stock linen or good but not amazing quality. https://www.fabrics-store.com/

Purple Seamstress - This is where I buy my solid cotton lycra jersey. They have other things, but the jersey is what I'm here for. Inexpensive and very good quality. If you ask she will mail you a swatch card for the solids. https://purpleseamstressfabric.com/

LA Finch - deadstock fabrics with a fantastic remnant selection https://lafinchfabrics.myshopify.com/

Califabrics - mix of deadstock and big brands, easy to navigate and always seem to have good denim in stock. https://califabrics.com/

Boho Fabrics - good variety, nice bundles. I have also gotten some really great trims from here. https://www.bohofabrics.com/

Firecracker Fabrics - garment and quilting fabrics, really nice selection and great sale section. I've bought $5 yard quilting cottons here several times. https://www.firecrackerfabrics.com/

Hancock's of Paducah - Quilting fabric and some limited garment fabric. AMAZING sale section. Do not sleep on the sale section. This is my first stop when buying quilting fabrics. Usually the last stop too. Not particularly speedy shipping. https://www.hancocks-paducah.com/

Itokri - This is something a little different. Itokri is an Indian business with incredible traditional fabrics. Shipping to the US is expensive, but the fabric is so inexpensive it evens out. I generally end up paying like $30 for shipping. Beautiful ikat and block prints. https://itokri.com/

Miss Matatabi - this is a little treat. This isn't where you go to save money, but there are so many beautiful things in this shop. Ships from Japan incredibly quickly. https://shop.missmatatabi.com/

Lucky Deluxe - Craft thrift store, always has an incredible selection and fantastic customer service. I need to close the tab fast because I never go to this website without finding something I need. https://www.luckydeluxefabrics.com/

Swanson's - the OG of online craft thrift stores, but I find their website harder to navigate. https://www.swansonsfabrics.com

Honorary Mentions: I haven't shopped at these places yet but I have had them recommended and likely will at some point.

A Thrifty Notion - https://athriftynotion.com/

Creative Closeouts - https://creativecloseoutsfabric.com/ being rebranded to sewsnip.com on March 1 - quilting deadstock

Hawthorne Supply Co. - I just got this rec and I think I need to not look too closely or I'm going to slip with my debit card. https://www.hawthornesupplyco.com/

This is not an exhaustive list of everywhere you can buy fabric, or even a full list of where I shop. There are SO many options out there in the world. You also need to think outside the fabric store box. I thrift men's shirt fabrics for quilts and sheets for backing fabric. I don't do a ton of in person thrifting and my local stores don't get a lot of craft materials but every thrift store is its own universe and reflects the community it is in. Go out and find something cool.

https://dharmatrading.com - silks

https://renaissancefabrics.com - linen, cotton, wool, silk, notions.

https://periodfabric.com - more historical fabrics

https://bigduckcanvas.com - duck and canvas like it says. tent fabric.

https://fabrics-store.com - linen and cotton. They sell kits for kitchen towels too.

https://woolsome.shop - wool

https://www.papercityfabrics.com/ - everything is $4/yd

https://metrotextilesnyc.com - has a lot of quilting fabric

https://fabricdepot.com - general fabric store

https://onlinefabricstore.com - general fabric store

https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com - SYNTHETIC PLASTIC WHALEBONE FROM GERMANY. BEHAVES LIKE WHALEBONE!!! they also carry clothing, fabric etc but the whalebone is the exciting thing bc I do not know many places in the states to get this stuff.

https://farthingalecorsetmakingsupplies.com - Corset supplies, another place to get synthetic whalebone.

https://firemountaingems.com - bead store!

https://beadtin.com - bead store, emphasis on pony beads.

https://jetpens.com - pens, inks, anything you want for calligraphy etc.

https://tiedtohistory.com - goldwork supplies and other notions, patterns, some fabric too. Mostly sparklyshinies. This is my source for actual real genuine Thread-of-Gold and Thread-of-silver!

https://angelusdirect.com - Angelus paint, which is a paint used by cosplayers the world over to paint leather and fabric and shoes. It dries flexible and comes in a zillion colours.

https://shop.smooth-on.com - Silicone and moulding supplies.

https://dickblick.com - ART supplies, but I'm putting this here bc Joann's did sell art supplies.

https://sculpey.com - Sculpey clay, buy it directly from the company.

https://hollanders.com - Bookbinding supplies!

https://leatherhidestore.com - Leather, mostly the sizes for garments or upholstering.

https://tandyleather.com - Another leather crafting store, focus more on crafting. They sell tools and machines as well as leather and notions for leather.

https://patterns.bootstrapfashion.com - DIY dress forms! Plus sizes and men included!

https://herrschners.com - string things! Embroidery, latchook, macrame, etc! I hesitate to say a general craft store, but it does have a LOT of stuff. The prices for their DMC embroidery floss are particularly attractive though.

https://trimsbytheyard.com - TRIMS! They got fringe, they got tassels, they got ruffles and beads you want it they got it!

https://sonomawoolcompany.com - wool but more specifically, wool batting for quilts!

https://furlscrochet.com - ERGONOMIC crochet hooks!

If you have supplies and like them, see if the brand has a website you can buy from direct.

If you need a sewing or serging machine, Bernina is the best, followed by Viking. Brother is best for embroidery machines. Get an older Bernina if you can.

If you live near a fashion city (LA, NYC, Paris, London) then GO TO THE GARMENT DISTRICT. LA has a place you can buy fabric BY THE POUND. It's not got a website it's just a little hole in the wall on like the second floor of a building and a tiny old man is at the counter and has probably been there like a hundred years. NYC has fabric stores that are over a century old. Even my tiny little village has a quilting shop.

Also, join your local historical re-enactors or SCA chapter, that is chock full of crafters looking for new blood. The SCA is a great way to learn crafts you've never heard of, too, like Nalbinding. If you're not careful you'll wake up with an inkle loom and a spindle in your house and like five bags of roving from someone's pet alpaca.

Tailor supply store. Great for fabric but also for hair canvas (interfacing for tailored suits) and other notions

https://www.superiorthreads.com

Kashmiri Shawl

1837