Technically Linen is a vegetable! Linen fabric is made from the cellulose fibres that grow inside the stalks of the flax plant, or Linum Usitatissimum--one of the oldest cultivated plants in human history.
Flax is an annual plant, which means it only lives for one growing season. From seed-planting, it is ready to be harvested in about a hundred days. Unless the weather is particularly warm and dry, flax requires little watering or attention during this time. It grows to about three or four feet tall, with glossy bluish-green leaves and pale blue flowers--though on rare occasions, the flowers bloom red. Flax is cultivated around the world not only for its fine, strong fibres, but also for its seeds, which are rich in nutrients such as dietary fibre and omega-3 fatty acids. Flax oil is also a popular drying oil amongst oil painters.
Weaving: Linen yarn is generally woven into sheets--a process wherein multiple threads are interlaced both horizontally and vertically on a loom. Occasionally, linen yarn is also knit, or formed into fabric by creating consecutive rows of loops that intertwine with one another. By virtue of these loops, knit fabrics have a degree of stretch inherent in them, and because linen yarn has no elasticity, it is quite difficult to knit and so more frequently woven.
The linen fibre is derived from the middle of the flax plant, so it will be naturally thicker than the cotton bolls from the cotton plant. An average linen fabric used for sheeting has a thread count of between 80 and 150, which would be considered low for a cotton sheet. Now because of the laborious time it takes to produce linen yarn, and the manual processes that have to be undertaken, linen has become a higher priced commodity, and considered among many to be a ‘luxury’ fabric. 40 count linen has thicker and flatter fibres. It has a much softer touch but also has more slubs. They can go down to 28 in a few cases; as the count of the linen gets lower, the fibres can get thicker. The thread count is not an indication of quality, as linen fabric has a much lower thread count but is considered by many to be a far superior fabric quality.
However, what we must understand here is that when we talk of Linen in general, the world mainly understands it as Linen used for Sheeting. Saris are of course, a very recent phenomenon ... hence we have to see and understand the specifics applicable to them, in a different light.
It is naturally off-white in colour, but Linen absorbs dyes well and retains its colour. Linen typically, has a crisp and textural feel but it can range from stiff and rough to soft and smooth. The natural fibres of the flax make the woven textile slightly bumpy with a smooth finish. The better the quality of the Linen the smoother the surface will be. In some cases, you will find knots or slubs running across the fabric. This is a characteristic of a particular quality of Linen and in many cases is the look the weaver was trying to achieve. The finest and the most expensive Linens have a very consistent diameter and will not have slubs.
Linen has that subtle elegance that helps to achieve a clean tailored look. It is, what can be called, a timeless fabric. The fact that when King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened, they found he had curtains made of Linen hanging and they were still intact, says a lot of the durability and history of Linen.
