Basking in Creativity

After 15 years as an educator, I taught myself to sew about five years ago. It started just as a hobby, with a dress for my daughter here, or a set of PJs for my husband there, but it is now a full-blown addiction. I opened my shop fairly soon after those first PJs and dresses but as my sewing and pattern-making skills have grown I have created new products with increasing complexity. Continually developing new items for my shop allows me to sharpen skills, which keeps my brain happy, as well as to bask in creativity, which keeps me sane and balanced. I don't cut corners (except literally, with very sharp scissors), and I set a very, very high bar for the quality of my sewing.

Most of the fabrics I use are handprinted at a family-owned textile mill in my town. The mill has been in business for 80 years, printing stunning, lasting designs from established and emerging artists with hand-held screens on exceptional cotton and linen fabrics. I have never found a fabric of similar quality in any fabric store anywhere in the world (and I’ve looked on three continents). When I visit the basement retail outlet at my local mill, I browse the huge rolls of rich colors and imagine what I’ll make from this or that new fabric: I let the fabrics inspire the products I create. Figuring out what to make with a particular design and choosing how best to set it off with other fabrics is truly a joy. Because the fabrics are expensive and are available for only a very limited time, many items I sell are one of a kind. In fact, the quality of my items’ construction, my use of local fabrics, and the extremely limited edition of each of my products have earned me the official title of “Artist” from the government of the state of Rhode Island, where I live and work. As a person with no formal training in art of any kind, I was pretty pleased when I received that announcement from the state!

I want your whole experience with my shop to be easy and joyful. I adore what I do and I can’t get enough of sewing. Sometimes I forget to eat because I am so immersed in a project. I want you to feel the same contentment when you use something you’ve bought from me. If you’d like something special or different from what I have posted in the shop, ask. I’ll be honest with you about whether it’s something I can tackle at the moment. If you don’t like what you’ve received, or if you ever have a problem with it, let me know. I will do my best to make it right.

I’ll close with the words of a recent customer, with whom I worked on several items for her home-based day care, including a few things I hadn't made before: "Oh wow, they are sooo beautiful! We got home from vacation yesterday, and the box was waiting on us. The kids LOVE them! The prints are just gorgeous, and you did such a wonderful job!"