Cat tail

The Wyasipi natives of the Appalachian area used cattail plants as a food and fiber source but i cant seem to find much info past useing as a thread and makeshift needle.
Any ideas on if it could be refind into useable fiber?

I believe I read somewhere that the fluff from the seeds used to be used in things like pillows and life jackets.  Have never heard about more of a spun fiber that you could weave, that would be interesting.

i have not gotten around to doing this yet but you can harvest the male cat tail and lay it out to dry and then weave mats with it

Mostly people seem to mention using the leaves for thatching, seat bases etc.  This link pdf goes into a bit of detail on testing the fibres and compares them to jute, so OK if you want to make string vests.....
On The Ferns they say
"A fibre is obtained from the blossom stem and flowers[55, 57, 99].A fibre obtained from the leaves and stems can be used for making paper"
References are 55 Eat the weeds B C Harris, 57 Plants for man R W Schery, and 99 Plants in British Columbian Indian Technology N J Turner for the blosson stem fibre which may possibly be a finer fibre than the coaser leaf fibre.

To push this thread back up again.
A friend / fellow Stone Age re-enactor messaged that now is the right season for harvesting cattails (bulrush in UK English, lisdodde in Dutch). So I searched for information on how to harvest and how to use them. This thread leads to some youtube videos. I watched one and want to watch more later.

Maybe now other Permies see my post they have more information ...

I have made a decent fiber from cattail leaves. They need to be strong, stiff leaves, though—you need to test them such that they will not break or tear when bent. Then I boil them for fifteen minutes or a bit longer, scrape them against a cutting board with the back of a knife, and the fibers are gradually released. I have made a small sample of relatively coarse cloth by finger weaving, and am spinning finer threads so as to eventually use them for textiles. On the one hand it is a somewhat labor intensive process; on the other, the material is very sustainable, wild, and ubiquitous.

Finer corded threads. It is worth cording them because the cattail fiber, while wet is strong, but can be brittle while dry. Corded, they lose the brittleness, however.

THIS.   is what I've been searching for!  I knew that cattail had potential to be spun!  I have scads of it broken down into material I can make cottage with, but my ultimate goal was to spin it and make clothing.  All I did was split it, dry it, rewet it, and then make cordage.  Then I used it for weaving or basket making.  But I would love to make a nice linen fabric. I'm keeping an eye on this thread so I can learn more.  We have cattail in abundance, but it's a cleaner of water sources.  We also have invasive blackberry bushes everywhere.  The fiber from the blackberries makes great footage and rope, but it's real rough.  Maybe I can find a way to soften it.

Link to my first attempt at weaving something with catrail:  https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP86VV4bd/

I have made a watchband, and plenty of baskets.  Cattail gets brittle.  I even ran the stuff green over my wool carders and shredded it up close to what flax would look like for spinning, but it won't stay together for spinning on a spinning wheel.  It slides apart and won't stay a string.  I guess with flax you use water to help it stay glued together.  

I am learning, but by bit, as I find little nuggets like this hidden away on the Internet, of the  beaten path. So I will try boiling the cattail.  Maybe something like that will work in the fibrous blackberry vines, too.  BlackBerry is a lot more work to harvest, though.

I’m glad that you found something useful here!

One thing about cattail is that they get brittle if the air is dry. When there is some humidity they tend to be stronger.

I found that they also had to be tightly corded while moistened.

Every cattail plant is different. If the leaves break or tear easily then they are not suitable for cordage/weaving, or basketry.

I couldn’t watch the video as I don’t have TikTok but I saw the beginning image and it looks like a good start! How have you been making it so far?

Interesting that you can use the leaf fibers too! Never knew. I've made incidental cordage from the root fibers. Basically, I turned the leftovers from an inpromptu breakfast of fire-roasted cattail rhizomes into cordage, just to see how it would turn out. This is quite some time ago, but I remember it as working very well. The cordage was strong, and I didn't notice any brittleness when dry.

Soft enough for clothing or undergarments?



https://lampoonmagazine.com/cattail-fiber-textiles-from-wetland-plant-restore-dutch-peatlands-iris-veentjer-studio-rietgoed/

This article they make clothing with it, but there's not a lot of detail how they get it to spinnable stage.

I attached a pic of the thin cordage, just thread thin, that I'm working on.  It takes for EVER, which is why I'm looking for how to make it spinnable.  The person did  it in this article but not a lot of details how they got it to spinnable state..  Making cottage hurts pretty bad after a while and it will take a LOT for clothing.Thw stuff I wear on my wrist is bearable, and I made a watch.band out of it.  I scraped it green over a wool carder tool and then dried it.  Twisted it into hanks for storage, which is why it so gangly in the pic.

I have tried rubbing it between my palms like with nettle with no success, and rubbing it on a table edge, smashing it and rolling it with a rolling pin, all after it was dry.  It just broke.  But it makes nice charge twisted with a little moisture.

P Colvin wrote:Soft enough for clothing or undergarments?



https://lampoonmagazine.com/cattail-fiber-textiles-from-wetland-plant-restore-dutch-peatlands-iris-veentjer-studio-rietgoed/

This article they make clothing with it, but there's not a lot of detail how they get it to spinnable stage.

...

I follow this project since the start, but to me it looks more like an experimental art project than serious research to find out how to make usable textiles from cattails.
In the article mentioned here there's a photo, looking like underwear, but I can't find that on the website or instagram of Rietgoed.
All they produced were swatches and artistic show pieces. They go to international shows, give lectures and workshops, maybe then they explain what exactly they are doing, but it isn't clear from their website and instagram.

P Colvin wrote:Soft enough for clothing or undergarments?



https://lampoonmagazine.com/cattail-fiber-textiles-from-wetland-plant-restore-dutch-peatlands-iris-veentjer-studio-rietgoed/

This article they make clothing with it, but there's not a lot of detail how they get it to spinnable stage.

I attached a pic of the thin cordage, just thread thin, that I'm working on.  It takes for EVER, which is why I'm looking for how to make it spinnable.  The person did  it in this article but not a lot of details how they got it to spinnable state..  Making cottage hurts pretty bad after a while and it will take a LOT for clothing.Thw stuff I wear on my wrist is bearable, and I made a watch.band out of it.  I scraped it green over a wool carder tool and then dried it.  Twisted it into hanks for storage, which is why it so gangly in the pic.

I have tried rubbing it between my palms like with nettle with no success, and rubbing it on a table edge, smashing it and rolling it with a rolling pin, all after it was dry.  It just broke.  But it makes nice charge twisted with a little moisture.

It looks like she is using a similar method to mine—scraping away everything that isn’t fiber while the cattails are young and wet. Once it is scraped enough, it gets to be softer. It never is particularly strong, but I think that in the context of an entire cloth, it may be fine.

I forgot to mention it is best to scrape it with something flat, not comb it out with tines until after. I used the back of a knife. A butter knife might work too if it is a particularly flat, dull one.