Walking around Paris, peering into shop windows

I was recently in Paris for 3 days, prior to going down to Les Soeurs Anglaises to take a weeklong workshop on creative making. I had no agenda other than to have fun, so determined just to wander around the neighborhoods and find some textile inspirations. A friend had found a great little inexpensive hotel in St Germain des Pres -- a high end neighborhood full of gorgeous cafes and expensive shops. As it was August, many of the shops were closed so it turned into a time of windowshopping. Here are a few highlights: Textile Design shops -- Pierre Frey in particular.

Here is a shop selling high end jacquard "tapestry" made up into wonderful objects. Love the horsehead pillows. You might notice the graffiti from across the street, reflected in the window.

The Gien shop -- gorgeous hand painted porcelain. They were hardhearted enough to have pulled iron grilles across the big windows, but it is rather a decorative addition.

This shop, whose name I sadly did not write down!, had the most delightful things, but i could not work out if they were toys or housewares.

And a terrific shop of African made objects, CSAO Africa. Really heartbreaking that I could not go in! from hand painted step stools to Yoruba thrones.

See a related post about African fabric shops at my other blog, laurafosternicholson.blogspot.com

Les Soeurs Anglaises

Oh, I am going soon!  I have been longing to go to les Soeurs Anglaises in France ever since I first saw an ad for it in Selvedge Magazine several years ago.  I leave Friday.  Paris first for a few days, then the train down to Angouleme and on to Briancon, where this magical textile retreat paradise is located.  I have already written about Jone Hallmark, who is teaching the week long workshop I am attending -- brilliantly creative, fun, and an enchanting person, she will lead what I might term a week long party of making for us lucky participants.

OK, I might just be gloating here but look at these photos and say that you envy me!  this is a major treat for me.  And there will always be Paris -- send me your favorite textile spots in Paris and I will follow up here when I get home.

linen - the natural source and the material source

Despite this chilly spring we are having in the Midwest, I have been thinking all winter about my favorite fabric, linen.  (I do have another favorite fabric, which is wool!)

I have been working wherever possible with linen in my adventures in screenprinting, loving its firmness, crispness, and the perfect, perfect neutrality of it raw flax grey color. (I painted the walls in my studio this color, as closely as I could match it).  It looks particularly good printed with black ink when I am shouting my manifestos about managing the household, garden, and one's personal ecology. (I sell these in my etsy store, Greenhousetextiles)

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/100948681/hand-printed-lettuce-seed-linen-towel?

Linen can be expensive, of course.  Traditionally it had to be processed by hand.  It comes from the flax plant, the dry stiff stems, and is known as a bast fiber as a result.  It required a certain amount of wht we would call torture, were it applied to animals: retting (left in the fields after cutting, or soaking in a solution and then being left to rot until the hard bark rotted off), hackling or scutching (breaking its stiff limbs with a medieval looking machine), combing, before the usual spinning processes managed it from then on out.

I used to teach texile fiber properties to interior design students so I have these nifty pictures to show here:

Dew retted (from the fields) vs. water retted.

The resulting fibers are long, smooth and incredibly strong.  If you are reading this blog you may well be interested enough in textiles  to understand linen's prized qualities of absorbency and coolness in hot weather.  Nothing better than cool linen sheets on a hot summer night!  You may also know that the finer it is woven, the silkier it gets with washing (think linen damask table napkins.

This lesson was inspired by an email I read this morning from the best source for reasonably priced linen I have yet found (www.fabrics-store.com), and despite my rather good understanding of linen's properties, I learned a lot!

So here I quote from today's email.  If you want a good source for linen, this place is great!  The linen comes from Russia, and the color palette and weight variety is enormous.

• The Durability Is Assured. Linen has an extremely high tensile strength that provides your projects with hardiness and longevity. In fact, it is known that Alexander the Great used layers of linen, called linothrax, as armor. Not to mention, linen is what was used to mummify due to its ability to last and preserve.

• Enjoy A Fabric That Grows Softer With Every Wash. Just because it is durable, doesn't make it coarse. Every time you put the IL019 linen in the washing machine, it will become softer to the touch.

Features like these only begin to tell the story of Medium Weight Linen IL019. There are many other benefits that you'll enjoy from choosing linen:

• Unequalled Thermo-Regulation. Unlike cotton, linen is naturally insulating in the cold, and cool and breathable when it is warm. Additionally, linen whisks moisture from the skin -- that helps keep you less sweaty and more comfortable! 

• Defense Against Dirt. Because of its strong tensile strength and natural process, linen has been dubbed one of the purest fabrics out there. This gives it the ability to resist stains, dirt, and even the growth of bacteria. In fact, hospitals use linen thread for internal procedures due to its natural sterility.

• Friend of the Environment? Linen production requires five times less pesticides and fertilizers than cotton. Our IL019 linen is made from the highest quality European Flax and comes from a mill and process that is 100% environmentally friendly. This is guaranteed by the internationally recognized Oeko-Tex certification..

Harvest time at Monticello

This past weekend I traveled to Charlottesville VA (a frequent destination anyway) to participate in Monticello's Heritage Harvest Festival with the printed textiles I have been producing.  As I have written in the past, Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden at Monticello has been a major source of inspiration for me for 20 years now, and I jumped at the chance to spend a September Saturday displaying my wares at the very edge of this beautiful spot.

There were specialty food vendors, demonstrations, seed sellers (the Festival was founded by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and, I believe, Monticello's Center for Historic Plants), seminars on topics as diverse as raising chickens in your backyard to fermentation and vinegar workshops.  And there were historic craftspeople -- I saw a guy in a fab coonskin cap displaying (sigh) pelts and taxidermied animals (an important pioneer skill, I suppose).  Music.  Goat kebabs.  Cheese.  Microbrewed beers.  It was loads of fun!  People by the boatload shopping who appreciated my wares and purchased them, thus keeping me in business (I always deeply appreciate that).  All done with the selfless and energetic help of my sisters Sandy and Carol.

If you look carefully at the above photo you can see Jefferson's vegetable garden behind my tent.  All of the quotes and vegetables have been inspired by my work about this garden from 1992-93, the series entitled  The Thousand Foot Garden.  See my art blog, http://laurafosternicholson.blogspot.com/2011/03/planting-cycles.html, for more about that work.

LFN at the Land of Nod

these photos courtesy of Land of Nod

I have been waiting for today -- my first Land of Nod  products went live on their website today!  For those of you with grown kids (and no grandchildren yet) Land of Nod is a partner company of Crate & Barrel and I have been working with the for a couple of years now developing designs for rugs and bedding.  I have always loved their style and it is particularly fun to design furnishings intended for children but with a certain sophistication.  Above are two tufted wool rugs, which come in 3 sizes and these two colorways.

these photos courtesy of Land of Nod

Above here are a coordinating Christmas tree skirt & stocking made of  linen appliqued with felt, based on the bright banners I filled the windows in the New Harmony Contemporary Gallery Shop last year.

I have also designed several bedding sets for Land of Nod, which I believe will come out in early spring 2011.  Fun!

Textile Society of America

Last week, I took my ribbons out to Lincoln, Nebraska to offer them for sale in the Marketplace at the Textile Society of America symposium.  Although, because I sat in the market, I was not able to attend the many fascinating seminars, many friends & colleagues were in attendance and I was able to socialize and network at night and when people visited my booth.  The other vendors had fascinating goods: beyond the usual expected shibori and hand woven scarves, there were dealers of South Asian quilts, (Thomas Mond of Maine) and moroccan and central Asian textiles (Ethnofacts from Lawrence, KS); high end handmade clothing dealers such as Santa Fe Weaving Gallery and Carol Lee Shanks; artist cooperatives representatives such as Creative Bee from India and Quilts for Kids, Nepal.   Natural dyeing was a major theme of the symposium and Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Studio brought masses of natural dye substances and mordants.  ( I was able to resist most of the textiles, but indulged my curiosity about natural dying by purchasing madder root, logwood and mordants -- watch my art blog for what happens with that!).

Ethnofacts

Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber Studio

Quilts for Kids, Nepal

Carol Lee Shanks clothing

I got to the International Quilt Study Museum to see a fantastic exhibition of quilts from India, Pakistan & Bangladesh, and made connections with their museum store and several others for selling LFN Ribbons. 

At my booth I was delighted to have conversations with dozens of fascinating conferees about all sorts of textile subjects, and was gratified to hear from many of them that they had previously purchased LFN Ribbons at diverse stores all across the country.

John Marshall Japanese Textiles

Thomas Mond Quilts

LFN Display

LFN ribbon belts

The drive home yesterday in the October sunshine was sparkling and sunny, and today I am soooooooo happy to return to my studio.