Hi Mark Certainly remove twigs and other foreign matter but I'm sure the laceworkers did not cut their straw into such small pieces. In fact, such small pieces would most likely tend to pack down quite quickly. They would just take a handful, fold it a few times and stuff it in. A mallet was sometimes used to pack the straw down. Barley was the preferred straw as the nodes (lumps in the stems) are not too solid and should not interfere with positioning pins, so it not necessary to remove them. I made a similar pillow in the 1980s and it is still very firm.
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