Allan Brown demonstrates the processes he takes nettle plants through, in order to extract a usable fibre for textiles. 'Nettles For Textiles' was shot and edited by Dylan Howitt.

Here at Bentley Woodfair we see expert Allan Brown talking us through the various processes involved in preparing flax and nettles ready for hand spinning - from growing, cutting, drying and storing through to working the plant to reduce it to its most useful natural fibres. Allan uses traditional equipment, adopting specific techniques to best work the flax. We appreciate how, in times past, this would have had enormous production value - as flax and nettles were used to make all sorts of crucial items, from sails and bed sheets to clothes and cordage - and this skill still has its value today.

Here is my process to make nettle rovings, for efficiently spinning short fibers on the wheel.

I process my nettles by using a carder like a hackle. It works fine for me, so here is a little 'how-to' tutorial.

Recent research has demonstrated that many Neolithic and Early Bronze Age textiles used spliced, rather than spun, fibres. I'm using stinging nettle to demonstrate how splicing works, and will be weaving the results in a future video

Follow Sally Pointer as she prepares fresh stinging nettles for coarse, medium or fine fibres. This method does not require any retting and only needs simple tools.

A short film demonstrating how to extract strong, fine fibres from 'green' nettle plants to create thread. It also looks back into time and explores how our Neolithic ancestors may have been processing nettles to extract fibre for textiles.

Here's the 'back to basics' nettle string video I was asked to make. No scraping, no retting, just the simplest possible processing and cordage making instructions aimed at complete beginners to working with nettles

Allan Brown is weaving European nettles on a 4 shaft loom. The warp threads are made form green nettles, and the weft tread from retted nettles

Brigitte gives an overview of her flax / nettle / wool blend weaving. Made as part of a R&A Collaborations Film Production workshop, at UCA Farnham.

Judy Kavanagh, core member of the NFT Facebook group and co-administrator, shows how to comb nettles

Watch nettles being turned into fabric. This film shows harvesting, retting, stalk splitting, pith removal, carding, finger-spinning and knitting. This 'field-to-fabric' process can be used to give school age students an initial experience of extracting fibres from a plant and then turning them into fabric. The film can also be part of an exploration into the feasibility of local textiles production and can be used in Nettle Festivals or during the annual 'Be Nice to Nettles Week'.

Positive TV and the Ecologist explore the world of sustainable fibre and exlores the Nettle as an option to Egyptian Cotton. John-Paul takes us through his personal tayloring guide and explains the possibilities of this forgotten fibre alternative

Nettle yarn was also used in the production of clothing and especially lace. The use of nettle yarn is safely documented for the 18th and 19th centuries across practically all Europe not only on the basic of written sources but also through preserved artefacts. Center of traditional technologies (CETRAT Příbor)

In Russian - sorry no translation. Basically an outdoors / survival take on nettle processing including wood ash boil and steam wash, as far as we can tell the guy boils the fibre for about 2 hours. A few facebook NettlesForTextile members tried it, and created clean but very short fibre. Aligning the fibre and combing it seemed difficult. (source https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648679398499874/)

by Vritti Designs