The Linen Renaissance

A field in urban Blackburn could be the start of a fashion revolution, according to Patrick Grant of BBC series The Great British Sewing Bee. He wants to revive Britain’s once-great linen industry – and help save the planet

- By Margaret Bartlett. Photographs by Bea Davidson, Alamy and Craig Easton

Delicate violet-blue blooms nod and sway in the breeze atop slender emerald-green stalks of flax on a hazy June day. The gentle rumble and whirr of wooden spinning wheels floats on the air as a small group sits beside the field turning flax fibres into linen yarn, ready to be woven into homegrown cloth.

This is no bucolic rural scene from the 18th century, but 2021 in the heart of Blackburn, and the beginning of a potentially revolutionary fashion project. In a bid to reduce the huge carbon footprint of fashion, the Homegrown/Homespun project aims to regenerate linen production in Britain – an industry that has been dormant since the 1950s.

SEEDS OF CHANGE

Work started in April last year, when an enthusiastic team of around 30 volunteers gathered to clear years’ worth of fly-tipped rubbish from a small disused field beside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. They tilled the soil and sowed seeds of flax and woad – a plant used for making blue dye. In June, when the green shoots were reaching skywards, a group gathered on the edge of the field to learn how to spin flax fibres, then how to create indigo dye from the woad.

Among the workers in the field was a familiar face: The Great British Sewing Bee judge and fashion designer Patrick Grant. A driving force behind