I have been feeling a bit blue lately. I think I heard someone this week call it Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder.... that feeling of dread that comes with the smokey air that floats my way, the news of floods in Louisiana and the Northeast, the news about being past the tipping point of climate change - code RED.  Feeling dread.

But trees, no the forest, is my happy place and taking a hike (4.8 miles round trip) to visit this giant did wonders for resetting my attitude and helping me remember that life goes on.  I have much to be grateful for including YOU (reading this), this new run of Twilight Blue organic cotton sateen that arrived safely at long last, and the knowledge that we are ALL connected in ways we can't yet see or understand. 

Tamika is our newest brand ambassador. For her first project she requested our Giraffe organic cotton interlock. Tamika is an aspiring fashion designer.  She started sewing in 2013 after taking a sewing class and has become passionate about fashion design. She dreams of having her designs mass produced and sold in boutiques.  Instagram (@mikanicolay) is the best place to see her wearable art.

I look forward to sharing with you more of Tamika's unique style and fashion items. 

I just love seeing the variety and creativity that you all bring to the Harmony Art organic fabrics!  Here's a link to the projects that Marianne (Adventurous Quilter) our first brand ambassador has been creating with the Harmony Art organic fabrics.

Meet Giraffa O'keefe  - an eye pillow created by Herbal Animals.  The fabric is a 100% GOTS certified organic cotton interlock. This fabric was a co-creation with Herbal Animals founder, Lauren.  She wanted a giraffe design so we worked together to create a design that would work for her needs and then had it hand screen printed at a GOTS certified facility in India. She took half of the production run into her business and I have been selling the rest through Harmony Art.  I love this co-creating process and am always happy to help people bring their vision to life.

I also LOVE LOVE LOVE witnessing the creative ways that different people use our organic  fabrics in different ways! Stay tuned to our next blog post (I promise I'll get it up soon!) . . . where I will introduce you to Tamika our newest brand ambassador who has a whole new take on how to bring this Giraffe fabric to life.

Meanwhile, if you have a fabric concept you want help getting materialized (pun intended!), feel free to contact me.  Let's talk!

This month Harmony Art turns 16. It's been quite a journey!  Many of you have been with me from the start when the idea of printed colorful organic fabrics for home sewers and small businesses was just a concept. I still remember the first company (Cotton Monkey) who embraced our fabrics and created a line of crib sheets around it.  The shift from working with the largest companies in the world (Walmart, Target, etc) to the smallest has been rewarding in ways that are hard to express.  I've been witness to births, deaths, marriages. . . together we have survived cancer, car crashes, floods, fires, political earthquakes, and pandemics.  I just wanted to take a minute to say:

As some of you know, I am married to the Executive Director of the Gualala Arts - a visual and preforming art center in our local community.  As you can imagine, 2020 was a tough year for Gualala Arts as all events from March 13th on had to be canceled or re-imagined.  For their year- end fundraiser I decided to make "take and bake" gingerbread pancake mix sold in reusable mason jars.

I don't normally send gifts for holidays but this year I was inspired to break with my own rules (if 2020 taught us nothing its that we have to be adaptable!) and sent my gingerbread pancake mix to family and a few friends so that if we couldn't be together sharing a meal, we could share in a sweet memory together.  For easier (and safer) shipping I sewed reusable produce bags out of Space Cowboy to ship the mix in.  I also mixed up the cookie cutters to go with the person.

Photos of the sweet memory of the moment have started to flow back to me and it brings me joy to see them and share them with you.

For my 50th birthday (Nov 2018) my bonus mom (Trudy) asked me how I wanted to celebrate.  The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (aka The Lynching Museum) had recently opened and I felt compelled to visit it in person.  To me, learning about and confronting the ugly parts of our past is and important part of our move forward.  Many of Trudy's family perished in the holocaust and she has been a long supporter of Southern Poverty Law Center - I knew out of all my friends she would be the perfect person to take the trip with.  It took some planning but a year later in Nov. 2019 we made our civil rights pilgrimage to the south - Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, Atlanta. We went to 8 museums and saw many monuments.

We walked across the Edward Pettis Bridge and explored the Selma Interpretive Center.  Tucked in the back of that one small museum was a pin display that has been haunting me ever since:

So, fast forward several months and the murder of George Floyd (and many many other unnecessary losses of life) - it seemed like it was about time an ALWAYS pin should be produced.  An easy simple way to communicate the wearer's commitment to anti-racism.  I knew I wanted to use a USA pin company owned by a person of color.  I had 1,000 made by a black woman-owned company in Detroit, and my friend (and writer) Nigelle helped me finalize the text:

As of today, I have given away about 400.   What I LOVE about my ALWAYS pin is that when I put it on each day it is a reminder that I (a white woman of privilege) need to keep this topic and commitment front and center. 

PLEASE NOTE: I am not making any money off these pins.  If people are inspired to make a donation to EJI or any other like-minded organization that is appreciated.

Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile know I am NOT a fan of single-use plastic. My feeling is that solving one simple problem (getting something home from the store or restaurant) and creating a much more difficult problem (polluted air, water, land!) is really insane. Last week my friend George sent me a link to this NPR episode:
How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
I highly recommend reading or listening to the entire thing but the sad takeaway is summarized in this quote from the segment: "Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true."

If you are like me you have been watching in horror as the Pandemic has brought a resurgence of single-use plastic. (My own local grocery store still won't let me use a reusable fabric bag.)  Then today I read this article:
Reusables Can Be Safe to Use During a Pandemic
and once again it is the oil industry shoveling misinformation for their gain and our collective loss. It makes me very sad.  Sorry. I just needed to vent.

It's been a long time since I have posted here (OVER A YEAR!). I guess I have been waiting for something that felt worthy to share. The creation of this monkey has been a bright spot in a rather dark (and smoky) summer.

This is a true story. It involves 6 people in various places.  It's a bit like that old telephone game but instead of gibberish at the end something special was created.

It began a few weeks ago when Maria (author and founder of Bear Mountain Books) asked me if I knew where she could buy an organic cotton monkey.  See, Maria's friend LeAnn had recently become a grandmother and wanted to get her grandson an organic cotton monkey. My first response was, "no," but then I remembered there was a local sewer who specialized in stuffed animals. I reached out to my friend Gail who was in close contact with her (Sylvia) and she found out that indeed Sylvia could make an organic cotton monkey if we provided her with the material and (organic) stuffing.  Sylvia is older and not tech savvy, so Gail put me in touch with Sylvia's daughter Barbara.  Maria shipped me the organic stuffing, I added the organic material from my studio and dropped it off on Sylvia's porch.

Within days Barbara contacted me and told me that Sylvia had finished the monkey AND made a Bear.  We had included extra fabric and stuffing since Sylvia was in need of fabric and preferred that to payment.  Sylvia had NO WAY of knowing that Maria's company is BEAR Mountain Books! I picked up the animals and mailed them off to Maria who now has a new bear mascot and LeAnn's grandson will soon have the monkey.

The way this all unfolded felt magical. LeAnn contacted Maria, Maria contacted me, I contacted Gail, who put me in touch with Barbara who was in contact with Sylvia! 

When I sent photos to Gail of the finished friends and thanked her for her participation she responded: "She (Sylvia) is awesome! Your friend can feel good about helping a 98 1/2 year old lady keep active. (She'll be 99 in December, God willing.) Sylvia is a blessing. She has macular degeneration, and serious hearing loss. But she keeps sewing.  Thanks for helping out with the fabric. I'm always looking for animal-friendly fabric for her to use."

I knew Sylvia was older but I had no idea she was 98 1/2!  It felt like this gift just kept giving in a circular way that touched my heart and made me happy to play a small part in bringing joy and smiles to ALL of us!

PS: Maria is the author of several books including the Moon Shadow Urban Fantasy series and the Sedona O'Hala cozy mystery series. I am looking forward to diving into the books she sent me and since I am trapped in my house (air quality issues) at the moment the timing couldn't be more perfect!  THANK YOU MARIA! THANK YOU GAIL! THANK YOU BARBARA!  THANK YOU SYLVIA!!! 

This is a picture of me - 50 years ago. Recently my mother gave me the little red velvet dress I was wearing in this picture. . .  but what I want you to really look at is the chair in the background.

What do you think? Should I stage the same picture with me sitting on the floor in front of a newly reupholstered chair?