With its many qualities, hempfabric, this plant cultivated for more than 8000 years becomes a essential fabric in decoration, into interior design as well as into accessories and even fashion style. With the brand lilimargotton, I recycle hempfabric grainsack to offer you shopping bags, totebags, baskets and many textile creations.
A peasant origin
This canvas, approximately 48 to 50 centimetres wide, is woven with long hemp fibre sometimes in herringbone, sometimes in simple weaving.
Thick, it has a natural colour that differs from one roll to another, from one grainsack to another and has stripes that particularly intrigued me. The stripes are spun or dyed into the fabric and used to identify the owners of the grainsack.
This allowed the miller to differentiate them. After having ground the grains, they returned to the owners their bags. Truth or legend? It is also said that it is purely decorative. I admit to love the first hypothesis!
In all the fields, estates and farms, several fields of flax and hemp were cultivated for the personal consumption of the inhabitants. The fabrics woven more or less finely were intended for housekeepers, farmers or nobles.
These fabrics were intended for mattresses, underwear, clothes of household but also to the ropes, marine canvas. This was probably the case for the marine carpenters, ancestors of M. lilimargotton on the part of Normandy: Saint-Vaast-La-Hougue.
Recycled hempfabric: an eco-friendly approach
I selected a hempfabric that is raw, robust and above all old, vintage. I got it thanks to Dominique, my second-hand shop, specialist of the old fabric. These 100-year-old fabrics come from northern France, Belgium, Germany or Hungary.
Among these finds are grainsack and whole rolls
The grainsacks have been washed many times.
Thanks to its successive washes, the hemp cloth has softened. They will be used for tote bags and bags, mini tote bags, kits and baskets. The whole rolls which were intended for the manufacture of these grainsacks and which have never been used, have kept all their robustness, their roughness, their authenticity. Fortunately, the natural qualities of this highly ecological fabric give it bactericidal properties against bacteria and antifungal against fungi. These rolls will make the market bag I call « Bag Madeleine ».
Textile creations in recycled hemp cloth
These are nearly 300 meters of hemp in which I draw my inspiration to design these bags, tote bags, lined totebags, kits, baskets and very soon apron. The hemp fabrics are embellished with red, mustard, brown or blue stripes. By selecting old linen sheets, vintage cotton fabrics or cottons with modern or floral colours or linen for the linings, the products thus made are all unique.
Hempfabric, the charm of recycled textile.
Remember that these hempfabrics have been hand-woven and therefore retain the marks and traces of time. A more or less fine weaving depended on the thickness of the natural fibre, spun by hand or machine. Hempfabric has a colour that varies because of the fibre. Indeed, it looks darker in some places.
In addition, the thread may have weaving accidents, small balls: these are the marks of time that should be known and accepted. Thus, the traces left through the ages unveil all the charm of this fabric.
