Flax (L. usitatissimum) is used to make linen cloth
Flax (L. usitatissimum) is grown both for seed for linseed oil and for fiber for making yarn. Linen cloth is made by weaving the yarn produced by spinning flax fibers together.
Flax fibers are among the oldest fiber crops in the world. The use of flax for the production of linen goes back 5000 years. Ancient drawing in tombs and on temple walls depict flowering flax plants. flax fiber is lustrous and flexible. It is stronger than cotton and does not stretch as much. The best grades are used for linen fabrics such as the fine quality cloth of the Shroud of Turin. Lesser grades are used for string and rope.
The Shroud of Turin is a single piece of linen cloth with front and back images of a man who appears to have been scourged and crucified. It measures about 14 feet by 3½ feet. The weave is a 3 over 1 herringbone weave. It was made on a hand loom. It is approximately 350 micrometers thick though in some places it id as thick as 390 micrometers and as thin as 315 micrometers. For comparison, a sheet of typical 20lb paper used in copiers and inkjet printers is 100 micrometers thick, about the same thickness as human hair.
The yarn (thread) consists of approximately 70 to 120 flax fibers twisted together in a Z-twist (clockwise). The various lengths (hanks) of yarn are not spliced together but layed side-by-side during the weaving. Variegated patterns of colors in both the warp and weft yarn indicate that the yarn was bleached before weaving rather than after the cloth was taken from the loom.
The thickness of the fibers from flax plants varies significantly as they do in the yarn of the Shroud. The average thickness of Shroud fibers is about 13 micrometers or 13,000 nanometers (a typical human hair is about 100,000 nanometers thick).
