Chico Flax

Sandy Fisher and her business partner/husband Durl Van Alstyne will join us to talk about producing fiber

products from flax grown in Northern California.

Sandy has been a professional weaver for over 35 years and is a fiber arts instructor at Butte Community

College. Sandy’s journey with textiles began in 1980 as a student at the David Gurney Weavers in Turriff,

Scotland where she learned traditional weaving techniques and an appreciation for weaving with linen. Durl is a retired teacher. Together they had an interest in growing flax and producing their own linen and learned about the stages of flax processing online and through books. In 2018 a former almond orchard became available to them, and Chico Flax was launched.

Chico Flax is the only small-scale flax processing business in the United States. They have been recognized as

mentor farmers in the Regenerative Farmers Program at CSU Chico where students from the Engineering

Department at CSU Chico helped them to mechanize the processing steps.

The Chico Flax product line uses the entire flax plant. They sell long-line linen for spinning into linen yarns,

fibrous straw (tow) for papermaking and as a substitute for petroleum-based products, and linen-blended yarns for knitting and weaving. They created the first commercially available, locally sourced, made-in-America linen/wool yarn and began selling it in 2020.

Sandy has participated in many national juried shows through American Craft Council and others and was

awarded the prestigious Niche award and has been published in both Ply and Handwoven magazines.  Her work has been shown in national galleries and private collections throughout the US.