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 🤗!

xo,

     Erin

Follow along the journey of ErinElsie and *Textile*Repurposed*Style.* Subscribe by email in the sidebar of my blog or sign up for Bloglovin!

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Making Clothes with Stories: Spring cleaning, when friends and family give me things...

Happy Spring!

I've been swamped with freelance projects for about the last 2 months and have spent too much time away from creating and my sewing machine! As hard as it is to step away from my design work, I look back and see that it was a much needed break. I can sometimes get burned out and put too pressure on myself to turnover new work quickly. The reality is that that is not the kind of items I make. 

 When I'm away from my workspace, I day dream ideas with the fabrics I know I have waiting for me. By the time I actually can get back to it, my mind is overflowing with inspiration and I can't wait to begin. 

It's always about the fabrics for me; finding and collecting unique textiles that inspire me, and breathing new life into them. Here's a little spring preview of some of the materials I'm about to dive into.  
  
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Friends and family give me old fabrics and discarded clothes when they clean out their closets, and I love it! I often receive materials in the mail. I love that the people in my life take part in the work that I do, making it seem even more sentimental and interactive.



My friend friend Jessica hunts estate sales with her mom in her native Iowa, and they send me lovely little curated boxes of goodies. I love every little piece in the most recent box!
  

She always includes notes. Handwritten notes are the best, I include one with ever order to my customers. A recent favorite from her was this little silk bundle they found at the estate sale of Lois Rayman, a fifties model and actress.  

Picture courtesy of Cedar Memorial

My favorite is this painterly silk fabric 🙌. 

oh the ideas...

When friends clean out their closet and think of me... I love incorporating denim into my work, and these old Levi's from my friend William will find their way into some new spring ErinElsie pieces. 

While visiting my Louisiana hometown, I collect fabrics here and there. Sometimes from family, old neighbors, thrift shopping with my mom. It's often too much to carry back, so my mom sends little care packages and packs the goodies with fabric. USPS flat rate boxes are the best :)

These items below are from my cousin Jamie, perfect for spring.

I've been collecting a lot of beautiful vintage lace, and I want to try and work them into more modern pieces. This lace comes from a neighbor in my hometown. She owned a fabric store and has passed on a lot of beautiful items to me. 

The last care package I received from my parents came complete with a Rouse's king cake - it didn't last long!

These beautiful embroidered bits came a while back from my Aunt Delsie & Uncle Mike, and I've been anxious to incorporate them into some spring summer pieces. 

Finally time to get back to my lonely sewing machine!

Thanks for stopping by. Hoping you all have a lovely weekend and week ahead friends! Live in Color 🤗!

xo,

     Erin

Follow along the journey of ErinElsie and *Textile*Repurposed*Style.* Subscribe by email in the sidebar of my blog or sign up for Bloglovin!

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Living in Color! - Textiles of Chile and at Home with Our Sentimental Souvenir

Living in Color! - Textiles of Chile and at Home with Our Sentimental Souvenir 

It's fall ya'll and I'm back from a blogging hiatus. This past spring, I did a road trip adventure through a region of Chile. Of course I couldn't get enough of the textiles and art. We've started a tradition of collecting fabrics from our travels to make throw pillows for our sofa. It keeps us surrounded in our colorful memories!    

In Chile, we were on the hunt for an authentic Mapuche textile. The Mapuche are one of the most native indigenous inhabitants, and are best known for their wool textiles. Chile is home to some of the finest wool in the world and the Mapuche have long woven this wool into fine ponchos and home furnishings. 

Source: http://vidamapuche.blogspot.com/2010/

I love that this shopping instantly made us dive into the story of these native people and their craft. It gave us an appreciation for these artists and the lands they inhabit. There's a strong chance you and I have seen copies and reproductions of their work pop up in mass market chain stores without even knowing it.  

Source: http://vidamapuche.blogspot.com/2010/

We found a great market in Pucon, Chile selling Mapuche textiles. They are not cheap, but as a maker, I totally understand needing to be compensated for your work. 

So many beautiful things, I wish we could have bought them all!  

Ponchos and high quality wool everywhere! 

Color inspiration overload!

Another fun shopping stop was a cultural center and local artist collective in Licanten.



We were excited to also find an awesome coffee stop next door after being on the road all day. For a girl who enjoys a proper coffee moment, they don't really offer to-go options, hehe. You have to sit and have your coffee! They served ours in a pottery native to Chile, mostly produced in the village of Pomaire; which we later learned eating and drinking throughout our trip. 





We picked out this beautiful green Mapuche textile for our pillow.  

Floor time! I am a total floor person, so I made this pillow big and full to double as a cozy floor cushion. 



 We are loving what this tradition adds to our home. Live in color friends!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a lovely week!


*Check out this old post about our sentimental souvenirs :)
http://erinelsie.blogspot.com/2014/04/sentiment-and-souvenirs.html

P.S. Shop great new items in my ErinElsie online shop, created with special bits of reclaimed vintage fabrics, recycled denim, and leather remnants. Save 15% off  these totally one of a kind items by using code FALL15 at checkout or the shop link below!  

Click here to shop ErinElsie!

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