happy first advent

The weekend before last I took a few days off and went, with my daughter, to one of my favorite cities on this earth, Paris.
To wish you all a Happy First Advent and to officially kick off the holiday season here are two of our pics of the Xmas decorations at the Galeries Lafayette!

Aura Herbal Wear

I just added some new organic cotton fabric to our "Organic Fabrics" category. These fabrics are from Aura Herbal Wear. Aura was founded by Arun and Sonal Baid and they are based in Ahmedabad, India. Their motto is "We live and dye naturally" and their dream is to offer the option to all users to choose an herbally dyed textile over a chemically dyed one without design, quantitiy, or quality limitations.
Aura uses only medicinally rich herbs, plant material, minerals & oils like, turmeric, Myraballm, castor oil, sea salt etc for dyeing fabric or yarn. They have aspired to achieve and retain the medicinal qualities of the herbs by immersing the plant material directly in the dye bath for the same reason.
Fabrics are exposed to direct sunlight, use of a natural grass base and animal manure starts the bleaching process.
To make the colors bright and fast natural mordents such as Myrballams, rubhabs leaves, oils, minerals, alum, iron Vat etc are used. They do not use heavy metal mordents like copper, chrome, zinc, tin etc.
They recycle their waste products through filtration into the farming industry.
Aura Herbal Wear also does custom printing starting at 100 meters.
I am constantly on the look out for affordable organic cotton sources and am pleased to have found this company. The fabrics can be found here.

michael miller fabrics

Here are some new prints from Michael Miller that recently arrived and have just been put online. They can be found here

natalie "alabama" chanin quilts

I love these quilts from Alabama Chanin. They are vintage quilts that at one time were considered unsalvageable. Alabama Chanin not only salvaged them but totally refashioned and refurbished them with applique and embroidery. Beautiful objects stemming from a beautiful idea.

birdy pattern

Here is a link for a sweet bird embroidery pattern via whipup. Go here!

YES WE CAN

Well we said we could, and we did. Pictured above the next President of the United States and his family. This is beyond cool.

hope

I don't think I will be getting much sleep tonight and I certainly hope we are ready for a change.
This is a free printable post from hyperakt.

decor8 discounts

Holly of Decor8 is kicking off two weeks of great discounts as of tomorrow, Monday November 3rd. Her sponsors will be offering discounts the first week and the second week shops that Holly has asked to participate will make their offers. Ideal time to start a little Xmas shopping!
(P.S. Volksfaden is participating, too!)

brigitte singh

Brigitte Singh travelled to Jaipur as a Parisian fine art student in 1980 to study Indian miniature painting.She became fascinated by Indian chintzes and their influence on 17th Century French Provencal textiles. Her passion for textile design led to the opening of her own studio in 1984. Her prints are both inspired by and taken directly from archive representations of the stylised motifs from the 17th to 19th Centuries of the Mughal Empire.
The fabrics are created by using hand carved wooden blocks in the traditional block printing method. It is a process requiring a great deal of skill with separate blocks being used for each different colour, the correct positioning of the block being judged by eye. A forty foot length of fabric can take up to an entire day to produce.
These are a few of her amazing prints. The entire Brigitte Singh collection can be found by Aleta in the UK.