For many years I have wanted to full my weaves in a fulling mill. Two years ago my wool traveling club decided to weave on the 2023 wool journey with the aim of a 2024 wool journey to a fulling mill.
The day finally came. With one of the members of the club sick in the last minute we ended up with four wool travelers and around 30 meters of woven fabric between us. Boel with one 9 meter weave and the rest of us with shorter lengths. I brought three shorter weaves with my handspun and three with commercial yarns that I bought years ago on a clearance. You can read about my fulling candidates here.
17th century industrial site
The mill is situated just outside Dala-Floda in county Dalarna in Sweden, an area with a rich textile heritage. There have been buildings marked on old maps since at least the 17th century here. In the mid-19th century the fulling mill was installed in what had been a flour mill until then. The fulling mill was in process in the spring and the fall when there is enough water in the creek to drive the mill, until 1941. Nowadays Anna-Karin opens it for courses and demonstrations.
We were welcomed by Anna-Karin Jobs Arnberg, who manages the mill, just as her forefathers did a couple of centuries ago. On the top floor is a miniature of the mill, that Anna-Karin uses to show the function and demonstrate the enormous powers that are involved in the fulling process. It’s amazing what can be achieved with just water, wood and wool.
Vadmalsstamp
The Swedish word for a fulling mill is vadmalsstamp. Vadmal is a heavily fulled fabric, and stamp means something that stomps. Before and parallel with the mill, vadmal was also stomped by foot in a tub for up to a week to get the final fabric.
Wet fabric is placed in a trough underneath two massive stomping beams. The troughs are slanted backwards, so that the fabrics are slowly rotated by the stomping beams, as if browsing through a book, wool page by wool page. Anna-Karin talked passionately about letting the mill do its work, and about listening to the sound and the song of the beams. Too little fabric and the stomping beams go wood on wood onto the bottom of the trough. Around 20 meters is perfect, with the total capacity of around 60 meters in the three troughs. Everywhere we went as Anna-Karin showed us the site, she listened to the mill to make sure everything was running smoothly.
Complete fulling takes ten hours, half fulling five and three quarters somewhere in between.
Let’s stomp!
To prepare the fabrics for fulling we soaked them overnight so that they would be evenly dampened. After Anna-Karin had showed us how to operate the mill we folded each fabric into an accordion so that they all would be easy to browse through in the troughs.
To start the stomping, one person pulls out the stopping plugs and another lifts the stomping beams. The sound was just right and we could hang out in the sun with various crafting projects for the next hour.
Every hour we check and perhaps add some water. Every second hour we stop the stomping, lift the fabrics out of the troughs and check the fulling process. The first ones were finished after five hours and the rest after another hour.
Rinsing and stretching
When we decided the fabrics were fulled enough we stopped the stomping for the last time and rinsed the fabrics in the creek. Holding the fabrics in the running stream was quite an experience.
The last thing we did before we were done was to stretch the fabrics under pressure on a round roll with a crank in one end. The stretching also squeezed out a lot of water. To avoid biasing the fabrics we rolled them the other way on rolls we had brought from home. I used a suage pipe (new and unused) and the others yoga mats.
We had all been looking forward to this so much and we had the most fantastic day. I was quite intriguing to just place the fabrics in the hands of the process and see what came out of it. I think we all agree that we will do this again.
The results
I was fully aware of the fact that a lot could go wrong with my weaves. The commercial yarns were old and brittle and could potentially break. The twill was an experiment that could turn out in a variety of ways. I had high hopes for the dark grey Gute weave, since I had fulled a swatch years ago. I was quite wrong about most of the weaves, though.
The weaves in commercial yarns fulled evenly and beautifully – 11 % and 19 % on width and length respectively. They will be perfect for the pillow cases I had planned for them. The Gute/Icelandic weave also fulled beautifully (5% and 22 %). It hasn’t told me what it wants to become yet. The Icelandic twill did shrink (13 % and 7 %), but in sort of a pleated way. I’m not sure what to make of it. Finally, the dark grey Gute did shrink too (11 % and 12 %), but is still very much unfulled. This puzzled me and I have no idea why it wouldn’t full when the swatch did. I will try and full it manually with warm water, soap and my waulking board.
Coming up: A video
I have my phone full of video footage, over 50 clips that I will eventually edit and publish on my YouTube channel. I can’t wait to show you this magical place!
Happy spinning!
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Vilken fantastisk upplevelse det måste ha varit med historiens vingslag runt det hela!
Ja men verkligen! Vi var så glada att det äntligen blev av och njöt hela tiden.
I’m with the Townsend Historical Society. We are looking for a 19th century Fulling machine to add to our open air museum Old Harbor Village. Any leads would be wonderful!
This is one of the five fulling mills in Sweden. Other than that, I have no idea. I hope you find what you are looking for.