Fall studio update

This summer was a strange one, of course - that's how everyone is feeling at the moment, right? We've been lucky to make our way through this unusual season with relative ease. We spent most of the summer in Maine, staying with my parents in their old farmhouse, playing outside in the grass and the woods and the sand box and the river. We missed going to summer camps and socializing, but we mostly entertained ourselves! We built a swing-set and picked a lot of flowers and blueberries, fed the chickens and gathered eggs and made lots of Duplo castles. I was able to spend some good hours in the studio while my girls stayed at home with their Nana and Grandpa. It always feels like the studio time flies by in a brief moment and there's always soooo much more to do, but I did get to finish some really awesome projects that I'm excited to share:

Hand-Printed Infinity Scarves! I spent a good bit of the summer sketching and planning and swatching and dreaming and printing and stitching on this collection for at least half of this crazy year... it’s pretty exciting to finally have something FINISHED to show for all that dreaming and making!

 These color-block infinity scarves are made from fun combinations of gorgeous solids and hand-printed patterns. They're made from are eco-conscious, suuuuper soft bamboo fabric and Alabama Chanin's very special organic cotton, 100% sustainably grown and milled in the USA! Stitched by my amazing and talented friend at Mama Hen and hand-printed in my Maine studio, with non-toxic, water-based inks.

I made a really gorgeous variety of different color / pattern combos, but only a few of each scarf, so they are SUPER special and limited-edition. I'm really excited to finally have them all done, neatly sorted, photographed and listed in my shop. Take a look and enjoy browsing the new collection!

I've also been working away on another project for at least a year: High-quality LINEN tea towels, custom stitched (and hand-printed) in Maine! I love doing tea towels but wasn't always 100% happy with the quality of the cotton towels I was working with. After ordering linen fabric samples from a dozen different sources, we stitched and printed some sample towels and have been living with them for almost a year now, testing them out in the kitchen and around the house with great results.

One of my favorite things about linen towels is how well they wash and how fast they dry. We've been doing SO MUCH hand-washing (family of 4, two small kids, viral pandemic, wash, wash, wash, repeat!) and sometimes our cotton terry towels ended up soggy by lunchtime because they just don't dry fast enough. Linen towels work nicely and they dry in just a few minutes. I've taken to throwing our hand-drying-towels in the laundry at least once a day, and the linen holds up well with lots of washing and drying! 

I have a handful of really fun new designs for this year, but I haven't quiiiite finished photographing and listing all the linen towels, but I hope to have them all completed soon! Take a look here to see what I've listed so far, and stay tuned to see more new designs coming soon.

Here's a fun peek at my printing process - a time-lapse video of me working on the new linen mushroom towels in the studio over the summer.

Now that the summer's past and we're settling in to fall routines, I'm getting back to mask production and I hope to have more masks listed in the shop very, very soon. I try to keep a consistent supply available, but they always seem to sell faster than I can make them! Over the past month, I took a break from sewing as we packed up and moved the family back to Pennsylvania for the start of the school year, and then I got pretty sick with Lyme disease(!) for a couple of weeks, so that's put a kink in my sewing schedule. But I'm feeling better, taking my antibiotics (and probiotics!) and getting my sewing table all set up to get back to stitching as soon as possible. I expect to have a new batch of hand-printed cotton masks listed in my shop by 9/30, if not sooner!