Spinning on a Great Wheel

Great Wheel beside a modern treadle wheel

A couple of months ago I shared the story of finding and restoring a Great Wheel. Similar Great Wheels existed from medieval times. The American Colonists revived them when England started its shenanigans with the Wool Act of 1699, and it became patriotic to produce and wear only their own cloth right up through the Revolution and beyond.

The Great Wheel I bought had no lacquer, shellac, or vanish on it. It had been stained and most likely oiled to preserve the wood. According to my research, that dates it pre-1850s. He's an old one, but he spins the same today as he did more than 165 years ago. 

Most people mistakenly think the wheel does the spinning, but it doesn't. The actual spinning of fibers into thread or yarn happens in the spinner's hands. The wheel does only two things; it creates the twist, and it stores the spun fibers. 

As the drive band runs around the large wheel, it also turns the small spindle. Yarn, attached to the spindle, is twisted. That twist runs up the length of yarn and begins to twist with the unspun fibers in the spinner's hands. The spinner controls how much fiber is gathered into the twist before drawing it out into a continuous thread. 

Sound complicated? It's not. It just takes practice. In this age of digital everything, spinning is so basic and simple, it's almost hard to grasp. 

Dark llama fibers being spun on the Great Wheel

Once the spinner has drawn out a comfortable arm's length of thread, it is wound onto the quill or bobbin (depending on the style of the spinning wheel) and stored there while the spinner continues to draw out more thread. The process is repeated over and over again in a soothing pattern of back and forth.

On the Great Wheel, the spinner turns the large wheel with one hand, while holding the unspun fibers in the other. With a treadle wheel, the spinner has both hands free to work the fibers while their foot - or feet for a double-treadle wheel - turns the wheel.

Once the spinner has filled two quills or bobbins, those threads will be twisted together in the opposite direction to make a 2-ply yarn. Most fibers are spun clockwise and plied counter-clockwise. The 2-ply yarn is then washed, dyed if color is desired, hung to dry, and then it's ready to be woven or knitted into useful items for the spinner's household.

PeggThomas.com

Debut story will release in April 2017 from Barbour

The Great Wheel By Pegg Thomas

Restored Great Wheel

The first spinning wheel I ever spun on was a Great Wheel. That was back in 1978 when I was still in high school. I've never forgotten the experience of working on a living legend of history. Also known as a Wool Wheel or a Walking Wheel, it's an amazingly simple machine used to create thread or yarn. 

For years I have scouted around eBay and Craigslist, quietly drooling into my lap, knowing I'd never be able to justify the $300 - $800 to purchase one of these beautiful, functional pieces. Until last month. I saw a photo on Craigslist of a Great Wheel that looked - frankly - too good to be true. Priced at only $85, and located in the same town as Michelle, friend of mine, it was worth a phone call. 

I spoke to an elderly couple who said a friend had put the ad on Craigslist for them and that they didn't have a way to text me any photographs. Hearing this, I was pretty sure the photo in the ad was not the actual wheel for sale. But I called Michelle and she happily agreed to go look at the wheel, take photos with her phone, and text them to me. I called the couple back and told them I'd be purchasing this sight unseen, and asked what the lowest price they'd be willing to take was. I was shocked - and thrilled! - when they said $50. Michelle arranged to meet with them in a couple of days.

I waited on pins and needles.

The Great Wheel as first assembled.

My phone beeped and the photo confirmed my suspicion. The wheel was not the same as the one in the ad. I asked Michelle to see if the wheel turned freely, if the base felt solid, and to take a photo of the spindle. It wasn't assembled correctly, but I could see that all the parts were there.

Michelle bought the wheel and took it home. Then I had to wait a week to make the trip across the state to pick it up. It was like Christmas Eve that whole week. While I'd seen the photos, that can only tell so much about an antique. I still didn't know exactly what I'd bought or if I'd be able to restore it to working condition.

We arrived to pick up the wheel and my heart bobbled for a moment when I saw the gray/brown condition of the wood. But all the pieces were there. Michelle had disassembled it to transport it, since it wouldn't fit into a vehicle otherwise. We put the wheel and the bench in the back of our truck, and the spindle assembly in the back seat. It was an agonizingly long 5 1/2 hour drive home before I could put it all together.

Put it together I did, before falling into bed and dreaming of how to restore this beauty to some semblance of his former glory. I'd spent a great deal of time the past week researching Great Wheels. I knew by the lack of lacquer or shellac, it had most likely been made pre-1850. I sure didn't want to mess this up.

The next morning I cleaned it and applied a beeswax product to the wood. It soaked up more than half of a 16-ounce bottle of the wax. But with each brush of the cloth, a stunningly beautiful wood was exposed. With a few gentle and careful taps of a hammer, I was able to reset the nail heads that had worked up along the face of the wheel. I was thrilled. Even if it never spun, it was gorgeous to look at.

The spindle with a white paper quill attached,
black llama fibers spun into yarn.

The following day amid a flurry of errands I had to run, I stopped into a local craft store and bought a strip of leather to make the bearings the spindle would turn on. They had exactly what I needed. But I had to run more errands, meet with a neighbor, and then a repairman before I could put the final piece of the wheel together. Once the spindle was attached, I made a drive belt out of a piece of thick cotton string, waxed it, and held my breath. 

It took a little tweaking to get the wheel aligned with the spindle and to get the tensions set correctly, but within minutes ... I was spinning! Excited? Yeah, you bet. And thrilled to have salvaged this old wheel for many more years to come.

PeggThomas.com

Debut story releasing in The Pony Express Romance Collection (April 2017) available now for pre-order from Barbour Publishing.

Making Colonial Cloth

Today is a big day in my house--I'll have my first knitting lesson at my church, along with my daughter (who has had lessons before). Being a history buff, I don't think of it as learning a new skill so much as learning an old one, and glimpsing a history long handed down from mother to daughter (my mother will be in these classes too, as it happens).

One of the things I best remember from a trip I took to a Colonial-era village is the way housewives in rural areas had to create their homespun cloth. During the Revolution, wearing homespun became a thing of pride--because true Patriots would refuse to purchase cloth imported from Europe.

Inside this historic house,

Visitors get a glimpse of the spinning process. They have a huge spinning wheel set up, called a walking wheel, great wheel, or wool wheel. These spinning wheels are usually about 5 feet in diameter--so big that you have to walk back and forth about six feet as you're spinning, hence the name. (Exercise while you work!)

 The wool ends up on a spool, which is then detached from the big wheel, and spun onto the weasel, which puts it into skeins. It takes 150 rotations to equal one skein--and because the brilliant creators of this device knew well no one was going to sit there counting to 150 all day, the weasel pops after 150 revolutions. Sound familiar? Altogether now: "Here we go round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel . . ." =)

This process would give you your yarn or thread...but then what? The loom, of course.

When European settlers first arrived in America, they brought with them hand looms of a style that had been in use since the 1300s. Plantations would have loom-houses set up where slaves produced the cloth for servant clothing, bedding, etc. In smaller households, not everyone had a loom--but there was generally one in a neighborhood, and colonials often traded goods and services to the wife who had one in return for her turning their wool into cloth for them.

(Side note--in my homeschool last year, we read a novel [aimed at kids but enjoyable for all] called Calico Bush that includes this aspect of Colonial life.)

We today often look at this laborious process and think that producing cloth was very labor intensive and difficult--a sentiment shared by many of our forebears! Hence why those who could afford to do so bought cloth imported by Europe.

~*~


Roseanna M. White pens her novels beneath her Betsy Ross flag, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two children, editing and designing, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna's 10th book, The Lost Heiress, just released.

Spinning A Yarn

I can imagine all sorts of activities that might take place during Colonial American celebrations—perhaps games or speeches. But spinning on a spinning wheel?

 Much to my surprise, the skill of spinning wool and flax was much celebrated, as described in Shirley Glubok’s “Home and Child Life in Colonial Days.” And, at least on one occasion, was on display for all to admire:

 “At the fourth anniversary in 1749 of the ‘Boston Society for promoting Industry and Frugality,’ 300 ‘young spinsters’ spun on their wheels on Boston Common. And a pretty sight it must have been: the fair young girls in the quaint and pretty dress of the times, spinning on the green grass under the great trees.”

 If you have recovered by now from the image of this unexpected and spectacular exhibition, you may now marvel at the term “young spinster.” In Colonial America, a spinster was a word attributed to a woman, whether young or old. It, of course, implied that only women did this particular art of turning raw flax or wool into the useable strands that were woven into cloth.

The history behind the production of flax in America is fascinating. When the colonies were young, they needed a way to clothe the growing numbers of people. Animal skins only went so far.

 So a mere 20 years after the Mayflower found refuge at Plymouth, the Court of Massachusetts passed a law for colonists to grow flax. This is the plant that, after many months of growing and processing, can be spun into linen—the material used for much of their clothing. It was determined which colonists were already adept at growing the crop and using a spinning wheel, and it was ordered that both girls and boys be taught the art of spinning. Classes were started so the children could learn the skill.

 Flax was so important to these early settlers that a bounty was offered to encourage the growing, spinning and weaving of the plants. Families were actually required to spin a certain number of pounds of flax per year or be fined!

 The fields of flax were a lovely display when in bloom, adorned with small blue flowers (see photo).

 Months of arduous labor went into preparing the flax plants just so they could be readied for the spinning wheel. The long process was back-breaking, starting in the spring with planting the seed (thrown the same way you would toss grass seed) and weeding the tender plants, which was done barefoot by women and children. If thistles were in the field, they had to wear 4 layers of woolen stockings to protect their legs.

 By July, flax was ready to be man-handled, pulled out by the roots, laid out to dry, combed for seeds, and the seeds collected for the next year. Then the heavy work began: stacking, washing, more drying, braking, hetcheling—terms we rarely use anymore.

 A hetchel tool is very intimidating to view with its sixty-or-so long, sharp, iron spikes protruding from a heavy board. It is so frightening to look at that I used this flax tool as a weapon between enemies in my first novel, “The Road to Deer Run.” The hetchel was not a tool one wanted to trip over in the dark!

 But over time, growing flax lessened in importance in the colonies. The process took over a year from the time of its planting to being useable as linen ready to be sewn. Flax could also be difficult on the land.

 “Growing flax was very hard on the soil so farmers eventually started raising more sheep, for their wool and for meat, plus they could live off of pretty marginal land,” said Dennis Picard, historian at Storrowton Village Museum in West Springfield, Massachusetts. 

Colonists began blending the fibers of linen and wool, producing the cloth known as “linsey-woolsey.”

 The men were not without responsibility in the production of clothing, however. The looms used to weave the yarn into cloth were heavy and difficult to use. While women certainly did do weaving, men often did this cumbersome task as well.

 Of course, once the cloth was produced, then came the arduous task of hand-sewing this material into clothing for the entire family.

 While today we casually add to our wardrobe by a trip to the mall, the early Americans must have highly valued each and every shirt or gown as precious—evidence of the skilled labor that invested months of hard work into its production. Pieces that were homespun treasures, indeed.

 Photos of spinning wheel, loom, and linen garments taken by the author at Storrowton Village Museum, West Springfield, MA.