Summer, with it’s warm days and balmy nights, is a time when spending a lazy day spinning on the porch or deck seems like the perfect pastime. Still, it’s too hot to be working with wool and warm woolen items are the farthest thing from our minds. We long for cool fibers to work with – some cool cotton, maybe some flax, or perhaps a blend of these two fibers.

Flax and cotton blend together nicely to make cool, thirsty yarns that are ideal for summer knitting, weaving, and crochet projects. Weavers are very familiar with this blend in a yarn called cottolin. As spinners, we can do our own blending and spin our own cottolin yarn to our specifications.

For my cottolin yarn, I chose bleached tow flax top with a staple length of between 3 and 11 inches and some ginned uplands type cotton with a staple length of about ¾ inch. Using hand cards, I carded the fibers separately and then sandwiched the cotton between layers of flax and recarded several times to get the fibers well blended. Carding to blend was difficult due to the large difference in staple length between the two fibers. Next time I do this, I will comb the tow top to remove the longer fibers and only use the shorter fibers for blending with the cotton.

While I used bleached tow and white cotton fibers, there is no reason why unbleached tow could not be used. Natural colored cottons could also be used and may well give some interesting color effect to the yarns. There is much room for experimentation here.

I decided to sample three different blends:
75% flax, 25% cotton
50% flax, 50% cotton
25% flax, 75% cotton

The percentage in each blend was determined by the weight of the fibers.

All of the yarns were spun using supported long draw and were 2 plied.

The 75% flax, 25% cotton yarn has a very crisp handle, a nice luster, drapes well, and just a tiny bit of elasticity. This yarn would make a nice crisp summer jacket and is soft enough to knit nicely.

The 50% flax, 50% cotton yarn has a lesser degree of luster, about the same bit of elasticity, and has the harshest handle of the three samples. It would make a nice toweling fabric, great face cloths, and cool summer table linens.

The 25% cotton, 75% flax is the softest of the three samples and has the best drape. It’s very low in elasticity and has just a bit of luster. The flax in the blend contributed a lot to ease of spinning and the blend makes a lovely yarn suitable for T-shirts or camisoles.

All three samples were finished by boiling for 12 hour in a quart of water to which a few drops of Dawn Dishwashing Detergent had been added. The skeins were then rinsed in cold water, rolled in a towel to remove excess moisture and then whacked on a counter top and hung to dry. After drying, the skeins were given a second whacking to soften the yarn even more.