Harmony Art Chili Pepper Flannel

The lovely folks at Near Sea Naturals, the already notable internet source for organic fabric, have taken things to a whole new level with their new venture, American Grown-Spun-Milled.  With an inventory consisting of nothing that isn’t organically grown and then spun and manufactured in the United States, they are fulfilling a growing need for more locally based materials.  They are also continuing a long tradition of cotton and wool production in North America, as well as providing work for mills whose workload might otherwise be shipped off to China or India for cheaper manufacture.

Says Tara Bloyd, president of NearSea Naturals -

“At a time when many textile jobs and businesses are going overseas, our customers are demanding domestic, sustainable fabrics. They understand the importance of supporting the US textile industry and want to keep their business supply chains local.”

So far, their inventory is small, but enticing.   I imagine as demand increases so will the number of choices.  For now, here are some of the lovelies they have:

Thanks to my friend Harmony, of Harmony Art organic fabrics for letting me know about this great new online source!

And as always…
Thanks for visiting!

Rachel

Twill Textiles has just released a handsome new printed fabric collection by Peter Fasano.  Both Taconic Ticking & Taconic Stripe are printed on Belgium linen in 5 colorways: Mushroom, Sage, Straw, Lake, and Chinese Red.  Perfect for drapery or upholstery.  I love the way the printing highlights the texture of the fibers.

Contact Twill Textiles to learn about this and other sustainable fabric offerings.

PaperBoy was started by a mother (Victoria) who couldn’t find fun, good quality wallpaper for her boys bedroom. At least, wallpaper that wasn’t totally twee.  With her two six-year-old boys as critics, she set about coming up with hand-drawn images that combined classic ideas like dinosaurs and pets, with edgier imagery like graffiti and skeletons.  And thus was born Paperboy Wallpaper.

The funny thing is, that while parents might think these patterns are a bit too scary for their sweet little baboo, the kids really dig the imagery.  What dino loving kid wouldn’t want to imagine hanging out with them, like the boy in D’ya-think-e-saurus?

I can tell you just from the evidence in my 9 year old son’s pockets, that kids find skeletons fascinating.  I know he would LOVE to have a pillow with the Animal Magic print on it.

Hand screen printed on 100% Irish linen, these fabrics can be ordered in quantities as small as 1 m, so it’s easy to buy just enough to make a pillow. Or you could go all out, and by enough to make some really fun (and spooky) curtains.

And for those of you who find marauding dinosaurs, or skeletonized bunnies a bit too much, there are always the sweet shadow puppets of Hand Made.

Though for me personally, I’m all about the killer bunnies.

This morning it’s all sunshine and fluffy clouds, which is the perfect setting to think about springtime. In celebration of the change of seasons, I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of my favorite floral prints in organic and sustainable fabrics. Enjoy!

Plover Organic, Pink Roses – 100% organic cotton

WonderFluffShop (Etsy seller), Aqua Daisies – 100% organic cotton

Harmony Art, 10 Flowers - 100% organic cotton

LIVE Textiles, Topiary – 100% organic linen

Ink & Spindle, Flowering Gum - organic cotton and hemp blend

Rubie Green, Marilyn – 100% organic cotton

Mod Green Pod, Bloom – 100% organic cotton

Do you have a favorite organic or sustainable floral fabric?  Let us know about it in the comments below.

Campaign Desk in “Revolution Red” by Etsy seller abodewell, made of reclaimed wood.

Hand embroidered pillow by Lost City.

Oceanside Glasstile in Red.

Harmony Art’s organic cotton fabric in 40 Ginkgos.

Recycled glass vase from Spain.

Graham & Brown’s paint in Double Decker Red.

My best wishes for a very Happy Valentine’s Day for all my wonderful readers (who put up with so much).  Now, go out there and stuff your faces with chocolate!  It’s really what today is all about – right?

In my defense, I think I watched them all on reruns, but still,… I’m that old.

image by Starbucks

However, “Wojo“, the beautiful fabric on this chair, isn’t old at all.  In fact, it is a brand new, sustainable fabric developed just for Starbucks by New Zealand textile design firm, The Formary.

image by Dixson McCarthy Photographers

WoJo, seen here on the Cloak Chair, was developed for Starbucks by The Formary, in collaboration with UK weavers Camira and wool supplier, Wools of New Zealand.  Using an innovative process, they were able to formulate this new blend of wool and jute, the material used in coffee sacks.

Says Thom Breslin, director of design, Starbucks UK and Ireland -

“We’re very fortunate and delighted to work with The Formary to help produce this wonderful sustainable product.  The unique production process, which overcomes many previous technical barriers, enables us to reuse our coffee sacks and reintroduce them into our stores in a way that further enhances their interiors for our customers.”

When Starbucks first approached them to come up with a way to reuse their coffee sacks in a fabric, Bernadette Casey, Director of The Formary, realized that the first hurdle would be finding a way to keep all those recycled jute fibers from shedding.  After attending a wool felt exhibition in New York a short time later, she knew she had her answer.

But she didn’t want to use just any old wool.  She wanted something that was of the highest environmental, ethical and social responsibility standards.  So she turned to David Hammond, European Market Manager for Wools of New Zealand, who introduced her to Laneve.  Says Hammond -

“Laneve traceable wool is sourced only from accredited farms which meet high standards in regard to animal welfare, land management, farming techniques and environmental practices. By blending Laneve wool with recycled jute, we’re able to play a vital role in the development of this genuinely sustainable and ethically produced interior textile.”

image of The Formary founders by Matthew Plummer

So that all sounds really nice, but is WoJo more than just environmental lip service?  Well, the Society of British Interior Designers apparently thinks so, because it just awarded the fabric a Sustainable Innovation Award as part of the British “Campaign for Wool” spearheaded by Prince Charles.  Says The Formary co-founder, Sally Shanks -

“We have been working with Starbucks for 18 months now to create WoJo, and are continuing to work together on a number of other recycling initiatives. What WoJo proves is that when businesses are willing to innovate and make a sustained commitment to their environmental mission they can make a real difference.”

So the fabric is sustainable, innovative, durable, and lovely to look at.  My only complaint?  Starbucks isn’t selling it by the yard.

The “Woolcoat” Chair, by London designer Sarah Louise Dix, is a fascinating – and quite literal – blend of fashion and furniture.  By taking a vintage chair, reupholstering it in a lovely fabric, and then integrating a men’s wool coat, she has created a piece of sustainable, yet functional, art.

Of course, if that is a little too much for you, there are some simpler ways to get your trend fix…

This terrific, Moroccan style pouf, by That Funky Boutique, was pieced together from vintage men’s suits.

Here is a great pillow made of vintage tweed, with a cashmere knit back.  It’s one of several fun pillows from Etsy seller Modifyd.

Here is another stylish pillow made of vintage menswear, this time by Emma Dear.  Such an interesting combination of tweeds, checks and pinstripes.  I love the little button details too.

Of course, we all need a little feminine balance in our lives, so I leave you with this….

The Corset Chair, also by Sarah Louise Dix.

I’m not sure why, but I suddenly got a little early 80′s nostalgia going.  Hmmm…

I was killing time, wandering around while my son tried to convince a very overstuffed koi fish to take one more piece of fish chow, when I ran across a lovely sight…

A loom!  Now, I’m not a weaver, but I did once take a class, and I find the whole process fascinating.  As I stood in front of this loom and stared at the work in progress, I wondered what on earth the yarn was made of.  I couldn’t figure it out.  Was it jute?  No, not rough enough.  Was it wool?  No, no fibers sticking out.  Well, what the heck was it??

After dragging my family back over to the loom, textile artist Susan Lei, whose lovely work this is, was kind enough to ease my curiosity.  This strange, mysterious yarn was,… mulberry paper!

Through an painstaking process of carefully cutting rolls of Japanese mulberry paper into long strips, winding them up into a cotton thread wrapped yarn, and then hand dyeing them in tea to attain a warm, aged color, she was able to make a beautiful, natural fiber for her latest work.

As we stood and talked, my son became completely fascinated with the working of the loom, including the foot peddles Susan Lei used to lift and lower the warp threads.  He had a barrage of questions for her about how everything worked, and in the end, I had to practically drag him away.  That loom might as well have been a Wii game system.

It got me to thinking about how distanced we have all become from the way everyday things are made, much less works of textile art such as this.  Many people, perhaps most in fact, don’t even know what the terms warp and weft (woof) mean, even though without weaving, we would all still be running around in animal skins.Musings on our cultural disconnects aside, I wanted to take a moment to show you just how lovely Susan Lei’s work is.  The piece on her loom is the very beginning of a kimono she is creating for a show at CSULB.  The kimono takes its motif from a tree, hence the beautiful knotholes and leaves.  I hope I get an opportunity to see the finished piece, as I’m sure it will be breathtaking.

Susan herself is also lovely, but I’m afraid the one image I took of her managed to be one of those “oops you blinked” moments, and if she’s like me, she would probably not appreciate it being made public. So you’ll just have to imagine a tall, slender, talented woman in a beautiful blue kimono, standing by her loom, enticing adults and children alike into learning the warp and woof of life.

The U.S. based company Air Dye has managed to do exactly that, by creating a new technology that can dye fabric without using a single drop of water!  This is an amazing advancement, and one we desperately need in the textile industry.  There is one problem though – other than getting the word out and encouraging fabric companies to give it a try…

The Air Dye system can only be used on synthetic fibers, such as polyester, nylon and acrylic.  That being said, with synthetic fabrics so prevalent in the interior design industry, the water and energy savings alone make looking for the Air Dye label a new must for designers.  And what are those savings you ask.  Well, according to Air Dye’s website:

“Synthetic textile-dyeing consumes 2.4 trillion gallons of water a year, enough to fill 3,700,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. AirDye reduces water use up to 95 percent, (Percentage include the production of raw materials used in our process).

Our one-step process cuts the energy consumption of dyeing by up to 86 percent.  That’s more than 2.8 trillion megajoules per year — enough to power more than 12 percent of the homes in the United States for a year.”

So who is using this new technology? So far in the interior design world,  Hunter Douglas Hospitality and FLOR carpet tiles have both signed on, and I’m sure many other companies will follow.  Particularly because the technology adds little, if any, to the cost of dyeing the fabric.  In addition, it is possible to do things such as print a different design on each side of a single piece of cloth, making for great possibilities in reversible draperies and other applications.

Imagine if all the plastic water bottles in the world (around 200 billion a year) were recycled into polyester fabric, and then dyed using Air Dye technology?   What a great step forward that would be.

People often ask me where the inspiration for my designs come from.  In my previous life, when I worked for a design house, they would send us out “trend shopping” the goal of which was to be inspired by what we saw at stores…. often high-end boutiques.  Trend shopping was my least favorite part of my job.  I know many people (primarily women) would love to be given a company credit card and told to “get inspired” but I always found this task to be rather soul-less.  What’s the joy in creating your own version of what has already been done?

Now that I am my own art director, I make it a habit to go “trend hiking” on a weekly basis.  I always bring along my camera instead of a VISA and look for new inspiration in the natural world around me.  Designs such as Fields of Honey are a direct result of such adventures.

However, sometimes, an idea comes from people in my life.  Such is the case with 40 Ginkgos.  I vividly remember having lunch with Rachel Hulan upon our first in-person meeting and having her tell me about her attraction to the ancient Ginkgo tree.  I think I was talking about my personal connection to the Redwood tree…

I told her then that perhaps I will do a Ginkgo print one day.  A couple of years went by.  Then one day I was visiting my friend Theresa in San Francisco.  Growing out of the sidewalk in front of her house on Divisadero Street is a Ginkgo tree.  I decided to take a few leaves off the ground home with me and those leaves transformed into the pattern 40 Ginkgos.  The color pallet for the design was inspired by my mother-in-law who LOVES the combination of red, green and white.  It reminds her of the red Geraniums that abound at Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

I have had a few customers request “holiday” colored fabrics I thought this design in this colorway would be the perfect holiday print that could be used year round.

So, to break down the process of how I work:
1. Idea – thanks to Rachel
2. Reference – thanks to the tree

3. Sketch – almost all of my designs start with a Sharpie pen and white paper.

4. Color, scale and layout are then created in the computer using a vector based program.
5. Colors are chipped, and artwork is sent to the engraver and screens are made.

6. Initial strike off is received to test the color and screens… adjustments are made as necessary.
7. Approval is given and production begins.

8. The wait begins…. as the fabric is printed, rolled, packaged, palletized, and in this case put on a boat for its travel to the USA from India.
9. Fabric makes it through customs and is inventoried at our warehouse in South Carolina.
10. Orders are filled and fabric becomes part of our “in full bloom” collection.

I am happy to announce as of today, 40 Ginkgos has made its way through the long process and is now available for purchase!  Of course, this fabric has been printed on 100% organic cotton and is certified to GOTS standards for the processing.  Now that I “call the shots” I wouldn’t have it any other way!