ErinElsie: 2019

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

When Life Gives You Lemon Fabric... Remembering our Most Inspiring Italy Trip!

Ciao!

This past May, we traveled to Italy. Of course it was full of beautiful old sites, landscapes for days, and a constant delicious flow of local food and wine! Sensory memories stick with you and that's what makes traveling the best.

We've started a tradition of picking out fabric from our travels to make throw pillows for our home. I recently finished our latest souvenir pillow, appropriately representing our Italian adventure in a vibrant lemon print!

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Counting our blessings at the Trevi Fountain. It seams like a cliche and cheesy stop to some, but it's pretty incredible that it was originally built in the mid 1700s.

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More delicious cappuccinos than I can count...I love a good coffee moment, and the lack of to-go coffee options all over Italy really makes you sit and take it all in. Of course I fully embraced it.

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It's important to get in your photos to remember how amazing it is that you were actually seeing an incredible thing in person. I feel so awkward trying to pose, and yet strangely more comfortable jumping like a big goober in front of people for photos. Once a gymnast, always a gymnast!

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Lemon ricotta, all kinds of lemon desserts, lemon with fresh fish, lemon sauce on your pasta, limoncello, lemon soda...

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The walk to our house in Modica, a beautiful old town in Sicily. Much like our "New York diet" of walking everywhere, the stair climbs in Modica really balanced out delicious eating and drinking. It's built into mountains and makes for some pretty incredible sunsets.

Cheers from the incredible deck of our rental.

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Lemons, lemons, lemons...

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In Syracuse (Italian name Siracusa), where the waiter brought us freshly caught fish covered in basil and lemon + crispy white wine.

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Beautiful Noto, Sicily.

After accidentally driving our tiny car down a pedestrian only street in Noto, we found the infamous Cafe Sicilia. Yum, yum, yum. We also bought a whole box of desserts to go.

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Waking up in our beautiful Palermo apartment.

Eating one last fried rice ball as we are about to board the ferry from our stay in Palermo to the Island of Lipari.

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The old port on the island of Lipari.

We were lucky to hit wildflowers blooming everywhere.

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Life giving me Lemons - at our Island house.

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We found this perfect fabric in a tiny shop near the port in Lipari.

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I love how the latest pillow came out and what this tradition is adding to our home. Where to next??! Happy traveling friends!

*Check my last post about our Chile pillow: https://erinelsie.blogspot.com/2017/10/living-in-color-textiles-of-chile-and.html

Cheers! Live in Color 🤗!

xo,

Erin

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“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ― Lao Tzu

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
― Lao Tzu

That quote was on the little tag attached to my bedtime tea a few nights ago. Of course it felt timely with spring around the corner, but it also felt fitting to my type of designing and making. I can sometimes get rattled by the fast pace of the fashion industry, always feeling behind. The reality is that I don't make fast fashion items. The world is already full of so much stuff. I get inspired by the challenge of hunting for beautiful vintage fabrics, near and far.
This process is not the fastest, but I want to make pieces that people treasure, keep, and even pass down to others.

Before I work with any fabrics, I wash them all and often by hand. It's tedious and involves some testing, but then I can figure how to tell the customer to take care of the end garment.

The beautiful colors and prints may all seem random at first, but they eventually form little collections and it's my favorite part of the process. I make a huge mess, and then the ideas and stories starting coming together in my head. I'm currently in the "huge mess" part of the process with my latest batch of fabrics for spring, so stay tuned for new pieces ahead. All in good time!

*** These are some of my current favorites! ***

Happy Spring friends, hopefully these New York temperatures warm up soon! Live in Color 🤗!