Melissa Ray, age 13, of Hutchinson, Kan., for her question:
HOW DO WE GET FLAX FABRICS?
Flax is a plant that is grown for its fiber and its seed. The fiber can be spun and woven into such things as rope, laces and delicate linen fabrics. The process of using flax for fabrics ~s a long one.
The harvested plants are either put through coarse combs is a process called rippling or they can be run between rollers that crush the seed bolls and free the seeds but do not harm the stems.
The seeds are sent to mills where they are made into linseed oil.
Next, in a process called ratting, the stems of the flax must be soaked in water, which removes the rotting woody parts of the stem from the fibers.
Workers put the flax stalks through a process called breaking after it is dry. They run the stems through grooved rollers, breaking the woody part of the stems into small pieces called shiver.
Next, the shiver are stripped from the fibers in a procedure called scutching. Scutching machines scrape the shiver from the fiber with special paddles. Scutching also can be done by hand.
A final step involves the combing of the fibers that are alike. This part of the operation is called heckling and it is done either by hand or machine. Heckling separates the long fibers, which are called line fibers, from the short ones, which are called tow fibers.
For fine linen, the heckling must be done many times, using finer and finer combs. The coarse tow fibers are used to make cord, twines, coarse yarns and upholstery padding.
Leading fiber flax producing countries, in the order of their importance, include Russia, Poland, France, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Fiber flax isn't grown commercially in the United States. Mills here import fiber flax.
Leading flaxseed producing countries are Canada, Russia, India, the United States and Argentina. Leading flaxseed producing states and provinces are Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.
Flax is one of the world's oldest crops. We know from bits of linen found in ancient Egyptian tombs that people were weaving flax as early as 5000 B.C. The ancient Greeks wore linen clothes and the early Romans made both linen cloth and paper.
In the 1600s, skilled Flemish and French workers helped develop linen spinning and weaving in England, Germany and the Netherlands.
American settlers often planted flax seeds as their first crops as they moved West. But the invention of the cotters gin in 1793 made cotton yarn more economical than linen yarn in the United States.
Also, the use of linen in the United States dropped in the mid 1900s with the development of nylon, polyester and other manufactured fibers. The acreage for flaxseed production also dropped because of the increasing popularity of latex paints over oil based paints.