It’s a beautiful Labor Day Weekend. The Farmer’s Alamanac has a late frost end of November meaning more fall squash and zucchini. The high schoolers seem excited about getting to plant carrots and cabbages in our local community garden. Remember heading to France at 18 to study abroad and all the sweet pet names and sex jokes around those two vegetables older French couples call each other. French people certainly do love to garden. Keep expecting a fashion designer with a sense of humor to walk a runway collection with a bunch of fascinator hats shaped like vegetables on their resort or country collection. Maybe a collaboration with a singer? They would be great for editorials and fashion shoots to lengthen the body with the wide pant legs we’re seeing. Heirloom squash and cabbage can be quite beautiful for handbags. If you wanted to go full on country, do a Dolly Parton style homage shoot. Pop or rock would probably be running through a NYC or Portland co-op grocery store singing your music video and using a carrot as a guitar pick. Well, if any costume shop or singer wants the idea, it’s yours.
We’ve been working on posting our fall collection: Blessings. It is a series of 4-person kits around Christian heritage craft themes. So many textiles, so little time. Thanks for all the great suggestions and books from friends and family. You all rock. You can also take the industrial sewing classes. Normally they are in-person as it helps fashion students to get comfortable using the basic 10-15 industrial sewing machines in a design shop with supervision during the summer, but this offers our students more control over their schedule and a lower cost point. The revival in handcrafts is a lot of fun and haven’t done anything like this since finishing 5 years on the board of Sewing Acts of Kindness with the American Sewing Guild. People loved those free quarterly projects to give back to the community at large, but they don't always fit into busy schedules. The kits are a smaller personalized version to give back to your close friends and family. We don’t have the huge fabric stashes we had back then, but they’re affordably priced for people to try on their own.
Hope that you too are being blessed and have some great plans. And if you don't have some currently, there's always time to make them now. The news can be a bit of a doomscroll lately and sometimes it’s important to turn it off and go touch grass. Or in this case, go sew something.