The Linen and the Shirt

This story tells us in an epic way how the weaving process takes place. It is a very pleasant way of discovering how clothes are made from times unknown today. The writer lived in the 19th century and the story of his childhood is a testimony of the craftmanship techniques (Ion Creanga 1839-1889, Romanian storyteller).

The linen and the shirt

The linen plant: Do you know, my dear shirt, what have you been in the past?

The shirt: Well, I've been exactly what you're looking at: a white shirt, which people usually wear.

The linen plant: Not so! You have been a seed, after having been a plant in the wind, like all plants. Something about my size with a little blue flower. When you were big and ripe, people picked you up, tied you in flax tows and exposed you to the sun to dry. Then they laid you out on a cloth and beat you with sticks to get your seeds out.

When this was over and you were beaten and crushed, they took you to the river and left you there for ten days until you melted. Can you imagine that after they pulled you out of the water they laid you out in the sun in the same place where you are now hanging?

After drying you, they broke your stem, brushed you, and with what they got they tied up some other tufts. Then they put you in the spinning wheel and started to twist you.

When you were as soft as silk, they turned you into thread. Women put you in skeins that they dipped in lye to make you white. The spinning process turned you into a beautiful thread that they rolled into a ball.

The technique continued and you were used as a warp in the old loom. They stretched you very well, so you became straight when the weft was drawn and inserted above and below the warp. The weft is rolled up into the shuttles, which go from left to right to start the fabric from the first roll. From that moment on you started to become a piece of fabric.

The next step came when the sun was already shining and the working women washed you in the river and boiled you in the bleach, over and over again until you became white. Once tender and white, they cut you into the shirt you are now.

The shirt: That's wonderful. I don't know where you know... so much!

The linen plant: My dear, you may not know this, but people also make fabrics from the other brothers and sisters: hemp and cotton, or even more interesting from the thorny nettles.

The shirt: Oh my! How many things I had no idea, you are telling me!

The linen plant: Wait! I haven't finished yet, from what you are today you will soon become a cotton ball used in hospitals and for soldiers wounded in battle. Then they'll look for you to turn you into paper in a factory.

The shirt: If it is, the way you say, things are not what they seem, they were and will be different in the future.

The linen plant: This is the truth, sister. What was there before the wooden fence where they hang you, or the leaf from the mulberry tree that goes directly to the worm's stomach, or the rope, or the white lime?