A Visit to Felicity's Williamsburg Part 3: In Which We Try Making Clothes

A Visit to Felicity's Williamsburg Part 3: 

In Which We Try Making Clothes

At the spinning, weaving and dying house, we learn about making clothes.

I show Isabelle how they made clothes from three types of fiber: wool, flax and cotton. 

Susanna examines wool, flax and cotton

Do you know where wool comes from? 

Susanna meets a fake sheep

"Do you know where cotton comes from Isabelle?" 

"A sheep?" giggles Isabelle, knowing this is not the answer.

"NO silly, wool comes from a sheep, cotton comes from a plant! Cotton grows in warm climates like parts of Virginia but not cold places like England, or New England." 

Flax is a plant like straw or hay that has a hard outer edge. Ask Caroline to tell you how to prepare the flax to make clothes. It's not an easy job. You have to grow acres and acres of it, cut it, wet it, dry it, repeat, and then use tools to get rid of the outside edge. Be careful of the hackles, they will cut you AND the plant. Inside the plant is a soft fiber that looks like hair, called linen. 

You can spin any of those fibers into string to make clothes.

Susanna tries using a flax wheel

This lady spins wool really fast on her spinning wheel using only her hands and feet.

She can dye it with plants like madder for red and woad for blue. Green has to be dipped twice: once in yellow and once in blue. Red is for poor people and green is for rich people. Um Felicity has BOTH! What does that make her? Middling. 

Naturally dyed yarn

Now we try to weave the string into cloth. I want to weave a blanket for my doll but this looks complicated.

Susanna tries weaving a doll blanket

Isabelle tries too. Someone before us made too many mistakes!

Isabelle tries weaving on a small loom

Isabelle and I try out the big loom.

This is impossible to do when your feet don't reach the pedals and your arms don't go all the way across! 

Grown-up help is needed!

Susanna and Isabelle need help weaving

Some blankets you can make with a loom.

Woven blankets