So Saturday I got 14 yards of 45″ wide natural linen for $2/yd (SCORE).
The responsible sewing gremlin demanded that I whack of a hunk of it off(~100 inches) for my Viborg project and throw it in the wash on “hot/hot” and abuse the snot out of it (abuse the fabric before you make it into clothes.. then the clothes will behave better)(right?).
While it was in the wash I pulled a thread of the weft off the remaining roll to check it to see what it was like. I want to compare my purchased fabric to the fabric described in the Viborg article. I fiddled with it for a while and found that it was WAY overspun. Very tight. I thought this was a little odd but didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.
When I pulled my test hunk out of the wash I noticed it had crinkled up ALOT. I’ve never had linen do that before. My gremlin decided I should wash it again(hot/hot).
Again it came out of the dryer all scrunched up.
So I ironed it. It was very stretchy. I’ve never had linen be this stretchy. After ironing it, it was mostly flat.. but still had a some stretch to it.
Not sure what to do about it. I’ve thrown it in the wash again.. this time on cold/cold. If it comes out mostly flat I’ll be ok with making stuff with it. If it scrunches again I’m just not sure.
I really don’t want to make an SCA garment that I have to iron before someone can wear it. I mean wrinkles are period.. but scrunchy crepe-y linen seems wrong.
