spotted on Cole Haan!

The other day a woman I know walked into the gallery shop downstairs in sandals that looked very familiar: Erika squealed out "Laura! Come see" and Vicki's cute flipflops turned out to be trimmed in my Bukhara ribbon, and made by Cole Haan! I haven't been able to turn them up online --- must have been a collection which has sold out already, or from last year! Since I don't do my own wholesaling I rarely know who buys them until moments like this. Fun!

what do you think of these colors?

I just adore color. It really is one of my reasons to make art. I found myself giving unsolicited advice yesterday to a neighbor painting the facade of his new restaurant here in New Harmony, to change a tiny little detail in a scroll color -- and prefaced it with the fact that I am a Colorist. (oh, please! I can be a bit high handed, I am sure).

Here are some proposed new colorways for my Auricula Ribbon. I want to do it in a narrower width -- maybe 7/8" -- and think the round flowers will look like punchy polka dots at that scale.

Please weigh in with comments as to which colors you like best!

These designs are copyright Laura Foster Nicholson 2009.

creative mending with ribbon

I have been advocating mending for while now as the truly eco thing to do, yet I find myself happier making something from scratch than mending something old & familiar. The creative in me I guess. But I adore my Uzbek embroidered bag, so yesterday I mended the frayed handles by enclosing them in ribbon. I was particularly happy about this because it gave me a chance to decorate an original piece of Uzbek stitchery with one of my suzani ribbons -- Samarkand Scroll -- which is an homage to Uzbek stitching ("Suzani" comes from the word meaning "stitch").

There is a detailed account of this project on Rayela's Fiber Focus blog, where this is posted as my first guest blog.