Status on Agnes Begbe & sharing some Facebook activity ...

My hope is that we all find a peaceful way to live ...

Just a quick status report on the Scottish sampler Agnes Begbe as of this Sunday evening: 

On one of the Facebook needlework groups, I came across this comment by one of the members this Sunday afternoon  :

“So I have what is probably a silly question and hope you all understand my newbie-ness.  Can anyone tell me what, if any, is the difference between Edinburgh, Belfast and Cashel linen?  Is it just the location where it is made or do they have different weaves or textures perhaps?  Thanks!

.... 

now, those of you who know me or have been following my blog, would know that I don’t believe in ‘silly’ questions and all of us are ‘new’ at something just about every day in our lives ... so I chose to read the comments/ answers that followed this question.... 

and some of the answers were getting me a bit confused - and so, next thing I knew I was answering the question (!)

I was just thinking that this may be of interest to some of you but you may not be in that Facebook group so am posting this to my Facebook page and my blog.  It is just a quick copy and paste - hope you don’t mind.

So here is my answer/ I have deleted the name of the person asking the question :

  “good question ... all the names are ways of distinguishing the weave of linen... Zweigart chose to use names of cities that were once major textile manufacturing places.

In America, this means that the linen threads are counted in the warp and weft directions in a 1” square of fabric.... then these are the names and examples: 

20 count = Cork

25 count = Dublin

28 count = Cashel 

32 count = Belfast 

36 count = Edinburgh 

40 count = Newcastle 

55 count = Kingston 

And so on ...

22count is also used for Hardanger...

By the way, Moygashel linen is a beautiful linen for clothing - named for a small town in Northern Ireland”

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And then another person asked a question : “I've seen other types like legacy and so on. Are they evenweave?”

And here was my response :

 I was wondering if I should continue on in my previous reply ... this is also a good question....

So, basically, if you read my explanation above, I talk about the count of linen threads within a 1” square which then is used in America to give the linen a ‘count’ = # of threads in a 1inch square of linen fabric.

Now - linen is then further categorized to be an evenweave or an unevenweave ... determined by if the count is the same or different in both warp ( threads that travel from top to bottom on the loom  and weft  ( threads that are woven by the shuttle and go from left to right ) - a different count of threads in both directions makes it an uneven weave - so your cross stitch can end up looking fat and squatty or elongated depending on how you decide to use the fabric ... so, to me, this makes cutting and using the fabric ‘correctly’ very important although I know many people do not pay attention to warp or weft.

Legacy linen is another company just like Zweigart or Wichelt.

Then there are companies like Lakeside Linens, R&R etc - they take yardage from Zweigart for example and dye them further ... 

Hope this helps ...

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There was/ is still a fair amount of activity on the other group ... I think most of you know all the stuff I wrote above but maybe it will clarify things for some of you in other countries or newer to needlework on linen....