Viewing entries tagged
textile
Day 5: A little nostalgic
SIGHT:
This photo wouldn't be as awesome if the women sleeping wasn't sitting on the 70's upholstery on the train...
TASTE:
Freshly made rice crackers in the historic neighborhood of Tokyo in 浅草 Asakusa.
FIND:
One of my favorite item...Japanese 手ぬぐい Tenugui. They're simple cotton hand towels with a versatile purpose and can be used for wrapping, cleaning, or simply for decorating.
Check out these beautiful textile designs and wearables by Bhalo with a powerful fair trade mission to facilitate women in rural Bangladesh.
"Bhalo is a fair trade design label that aims to create desirable fashion whilst empowering disadvantaged people, especially women, allowing them to work their way out of poverty.
Our cotton is hand loomed and hand embroidered by women in rural Bangladesh, not only giving them much needed employment and training, but providing them with simple things that we take for granted - education/childcare for their children, basic health care, and most of all, dignity. We oppose human exploitation and feel everyone should be given the right to fair employment terms, and given a decent price for their work. Wouldn't you expect the same?"
You can read all their fascinating process, here! I would love to go there in person one day and learn all about their process! One of my dream is to travel from place to place and learn the regional crafts whether it be weaving, carving, dyeing, or casting....It'd be like the show "How it's made" but specifically for arts & crafts from around the world....wait....I think I should totally pitch that idea to Discovery Channel!!
Via Johnny&Stacie
This is something I just stumbled upon..it's from 2009, but still pretty freakin' amazing!
This whole line designed by Alexandra Verschueren reminds me everything great and fun about elementary school. You know...doodling with color pencils and folding & cutting with paper using mix array of line papers...all the things I love to do at school!
Except all these pieces are simply stunning and are WAY more amazing than your typical school craft project covered in Elmer's glue..at least mine was like that!
I especially love seeing the stylized sketches and swatch boards... 
I'm obsessed with general office & school supplies...and I'm especially drawn to the graphic quality of grid & line paper of all sort. So I think it's freakin' brilliant that Verschueren has turned such ubiquitous graphic into high-end textile prints...and on top of that with all the added colorful hand drawn/hand painted texture!
....It's all just too cool for school.
I'm totally psyched to share that I got some of these AMAZING purses from our friends, Chelsea and James of Grain Design. I been thinking about them since JOIN's Design Shoppe event last November....and FINALLY decided to just make a nice field trip over to their house on Bainbridge Island and pick them out myself!
Their new line of purses, Sololá, is one of their awesome collaborative efforts to celebrate the artistry of Guatemalan women weavers in creating beautiful, one of a kind purses.
"Each purse upcycles a vintage huipile (traditional women's blouse woven on the backstrap loom) to create an individual statement. Turned inside-out, the huipiles are an explosion of color and handwork. Each purse is assembled by Guatemalan artisans in Antigua from textiles sourced at the famous Chichicastenango Market."
I love how they highlight the textural quality simply by using the back side as the exterior. So clever. I had the hardest time picking the ones I want since they're all so beautiful! I'd take them all if I can...
They're available in the Grain Shop!
Also I'm excited to share that they'll be in the NY International Gift Fair starting Jan 31-Feb 4. Grain have been selected to to participate in the "A+: The Young Designers' Platform" section of Accent on Design along with 6 other designers.
Both Chika and I will be going there to check out the NYIGF for the first time, and I'm totally excited to see some exciting new things, eat good food, and ride the stinky subway! Can't wait!
I had the pleasure to meet a local Seattle designer, Dinah of Dinah Coops this last weekend at the UCU sale as her neighbor vendor. Dinah creates a sophisticated line of sustainble slikscreened tea towels made with 100% linen from Eastern Europe as well as printed wooden tablemats, coasters, and jewlery. All her creations are as nice and humble as Dinah herself.
We did a trade and I had to get the green and yellow tea towels for the great design and especially since they're the colors of our kitchen! There's always room for one or two more tea towels!
In return, Dinah picked up Piano Nobile's Sweet Pea print notebook!
I love trading for goods!
(Photo from Dinah Coops)
(Photo from Dinah Coops)
This weekend I'll be at the first Summer Urban Craft Uprising (UCU) indie craft show!
Here's a little sneak peak!
Another new exciting items we're gonna have are these notebooks we're debuting at UCU! These are made with LOVELY hand printed fabric by Isabelle of Piano Nobile. We recently befriended Isabelle and Nicholas and they're wonderful enough to print these fabric in time for us to sell at the show! I'm drooling over them myself....don't worry, I'll wipe off my drool. 
AND our dear and super talented friend, Ingrid will be selling her awesome bags at our booth as well! I'm totally excited to see what she'll be bringing!Through a series of events and connections this Spring, we've been lucky to meet some nearby and very talented neighbors! Isabelle and Nickolas, founders of Piano Nobile are a short bike ride away from us in Ballard - and Chikabird have some exciting things brewing with them.
If you're in Ballard this Friday or Saturday, stop by Piano Nobile's home/studio for a Summer Studio Sale. Part of the City Stimulus event running all week to encourage folks to shop local - it's a great opportunity to do a little shopping and check out a stellar transformation in the Ballard industrial zone. Prepare yourself to get incredibly jealous of PN's space, talent, resources, furnishings, dog, Vanagon, and Volvo. The sale features handmade goods by some fantastic local designers and we feel flattered to be included in such a group.
Chika and I met with Isabelle last Monday. Over coffee, berries, and coffee cake - we decided to do some collaborating! Isabelle has been printing her own textiles for home and personal accessories, so her scrap bin contains a lot of high quality fabrics. The following pictures feature the various patterns and pieces she gave us, and what we did with them.
I am super excited to share a little story behind the magic of La Casita De Wendy. Thanks to the invention of blogs, I had the pleasure to "meet" Inés & Iván on my blog through L&G blog!
I decided on a whim to contact Inés & Iván to share my love for their clothes. I wanted to find out how I can get my hands on their adorable dresses! (especially the top right, and the dress with the mug prints...actually all of it!!) I also asked them if I could do a blog post about them, and to my delight, Inés & Iván replied kindly and agreed!! I was thrilled that they took the time out of their busy and exciting life to do this. Thanks guys for all your awesomeness!
So, I'm excited to share everything about them and what they do! They make work seem so effortless and life more fun than the Wii! There's too much to talk about and I wouldn't do justice if I didn't share all this goodness with everyone! So be prepared to read a long post!
Inés & Iván are two super talented fashion & textile designers based in Madrid,Spain. (cool!) They often use colors and patterns that are nature inspired and motifs that reference Iberian fairytales. The result is carefree, passionate, romantic,and expressive. In essence, their designs capture the spirit of a fairytale girl living in a modern world...
Their designs are in tons stores around the world including Barneys in New York, Matsuya, Lamp, Koh Samui and Fenwick in London, Surface to Air in Paris, Suite in Barcelona, Deli Room in Madrid, and more. (even cooler!)
The two of them started La Casita De Wendy in 02' and they both actually first got their degrees in architecture. Clothing design started off simply as a hobby, but it's a total meant to be, because it seems that everything just fell into place for them....one word.....Bjork.
Yes, no joke.....Bjork wore their designs for one of her photoshoots for a magazine spread at one point!! (WHAT?!? that's just freaking ridiculously insane cool!) I can't even imagine how I would react if Bjork ever came to me and wore clothes I designed....if that ever happened to me in a million years...I think I would be happy to just dig a grave and bury myself alive...Yeah...since I'm pretty sure that I would probably just freeze and fall into a OH-MY-GOD-BJORK-WORE-MY-CLOTHES-coma for the rest of my life anyways....
Change subject. So here's my first little interview with La Casita De Wendy!
What's the main vision behind La Casita De Wendy?
We want to design beautiful stuff for creative people and we want to be inspired by the greatest beauty of nature.
Where do you get your most inspirations from? 
What would your dream studio look like and where would it be? 
They teach them everything from creating their own sketch/inspiration book, to creating their own line, to branding, to ways to start their business! So by the end of the 16 week course, the students themselves can achieve their dream of designing their own line! You can see lots of great process photos from their El Estudio blog, too. I love seeing all the rich watercolor drawings and inspirations.Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing about them!
Okay, gotta go and figure out a plan to live/work/study in Madrid now since God isn't responding to me....I can never count on that guy!
You can also read their blog to read more about their inspiring lifestyle! If you can't read Spanish like me, use the handy google translate to read their site!....I don't know what I'd do if google didn't exist. Cheers!
Spotted this fun colorful upholstered chair in quilted wool blankets by Jan Schouten from All The Luck in the World based in the Netherlands. The colors, the patterns, the warmth of the material, the little added delights of the doilies and stitched on words...everything about it makes me want go to the Netherlands and steel that chair. 
I especially love how she treated the back with the fringe still intact. It seems as if the blanket is just draped over the chair. So cleaver!
Jan also has a vintage shop where there are lots of awesome stuff that..once again... makes me want to go to the Netherlands and raid all the flea markets to find stuff like that! I want that black Joe Colombo-esque lamp so bad!!
Check out Jan's flickr with tons of great photos of her space and work.
