I was delighted to be featured on Handful of Salt this week! The interview for this profile was a little intimidating – a 45 min phone interview talking all about my process and how I approach my business. Afterwards, I was surprised by how easy it had been to talk about my work, I could have gone on chatting with Meghan (an editor for Handful of Salt) for much longer.
Check out the profile on Cotton & Flax here.
Every so often, I find some time to experiment and make projects that I know won’t be for sale in the Cotton & Flax shop (at least, not for quite a while). A few weeks ago, I spent that experimental time making a pair of botanical ink drawings. Last weekend, I spent some time experimenting with indigo and learning about traditional Shibori techniques with Niki Livingston.
This week, I spent some time digging through scraps of unused Cotton & Flax fabric to look for pieces large enough to make a new pillow (first photo above). I’m not perfect – I sometimes create misprints or pieces that are too irregular to be made into pillows for the shop, but I save all the scraps – I hate throwing fabric away. After sorting through the scraps on Saturday, I found a few pieces that were large enough to create a patchwork lumbar pillow, which now lives on my sofa! I love the look of all the different patterns together, don’t you? I also created a small storage bin from a scrap of fabric left over from some printing experiments I did back in 2011. The bin is the perfect size to hold the printed tags I use for Cotton & Flax tea towels.
I realized that I haven’t been great about sharing when I’ve been interviewed. Want to know more about me and my process behind designing for Cotton & Flax? Read one (or all) of these interviews:
I’ll be sure to post here next time I’m interviewed, sorry for holding out on you for so long!
I’ll be honest: if I had a lot more time in the day to share my work online, I’d prefer to share it here on the blog. I prefer the longer format, and I like being able to share more than a few sentences about the ideas or process behind my work. When I share on my blog, I hope to give you all a sense of the work that goes into building Cotton & Flax, and person behind it all (hello, that’s me!) I think the work I’m making deserves more than 140 characters!
However, I’ve been enjoying sharing little snippets of my day to day on instagram, facebook, and twitter. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, particularly because I don’t like feeling distracted. Too often, I log on to Twitter to share something I’m working on, and then fall down the rabbit hole of endless scrolling. But I do love being able to snap a photo with my phone, and share it immediately, though; it’s nice to get instant feedback. I was thinking about my instagram followers this morning, and how much encouragement I’ve received after posting in-progress photos there… it really does help to keep me on the right track.
I’m curious, for those of you who are on lots of social media platforms: how do you strike a balance between socializing online, and getting completely distracted? Any tips for this social media newbie?
The Spring/Summer collection from Cotton & Flax is here! Shop the collection, and scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more.
So excited to finally share the Spring/Summer Collection for Cotton & Flax! Many of the most popular colors and designs are sticking around, and the lovely mint green fabric, which was retired for many months, has returned to the collection (on pillows both large and small). I love all the color that has been packed into this collection, it really is just the thing to ring in this late-coming spring.
By popular request, coasters are back in the shop, including a lovely new latte color. I am still so in love with that wool felt material, it’s really a perfect blend of casual class for easy entertaining.
As I mentioned, I worked extensively with Hollin Brodeur to photograph the new and continuing products for this season. Photos 1, 3, 6, and 14 were taken by Hollin, the rest are my own. Thanks for scrolling though this photo heavy post, I hope you’re as excited about the new look as I am!
I’ve gotten a few emails about my business cards this month, so I thought I would feature them again. I wrote about the process behind them back in September when I first watched them being made, but for those who missed that post, here are the basics.
These are hands down the nicest business cards I’ve ever had, thanks to Laura Carignan from Lulu Dee for creating them for me!
