It must be because I’ve been nearsighted since I was 11 years old, but there’s really something about tiny things that attract me. I found this enamelled bird at the flea market in Lunel last Saturday. Cute, isn’t she?
Textile experiment: Back to apples
It’s amazing how when you start working on one creative project, something switches on somewhere inside, compelling you to get some more creating done. This is what happened to me, when during pauses at work on 7100 Islands, I got the urge to go back to my fabric sculptures.
I want them looking more abstract, and more ephemeral. Here’s a first try, made from vintage linen and a twig I saved from a dead acacia tree.
FR: L’appétit vient en mangeant.. En créant des objets pour 7100 Islands, j’ai ressentie le besoin de reprendre mon travail en textile, de retravailler mes petits fruits, cette fois en plus éphémère, plus abstrait. Voici mon premier essai:
And a close-up:
FR: Et encore une fois…
P.S. In my months-long hiatus from this blog, I tried other sites, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. Here’s an interesting entry I wrote on Tumblr, about why I launched a new business and stopped selling fabric apples and pears at La Pomme.
Change
I am being asked why I am giving up sewing my apples and pears, and moving on to something totally different – the bags and jewelry to which this new blog is dedicated. I tried to answer in a post two weeks ago, but reading it again, I found my explanation so lame. I said that “I feel it is time to move on,” but never went much beyond that. I’ll try to explain myself better this time.
There are creative reasons. The birth of my child in late 2009 changed me. I became so much more practical; everything in the house, for example, has to be there for a reason. No more flimsy paper lamps that a toddler can pull at and rip to pieces. No more glass thingamajigs looking pretty and begging to be broken. That spilled over into my creating. Whenever I tried to make a new pattern for a stuffed fruit or a fabric bird, there was this tiny voice in my head, demanding, “But what is it for?”
There are also business reasons. The birth of my child changed me. I became so much more practical. The earnings of the online shop La Pomme, when it was devoted solely to sewn goods, was erratic, going anywhere from US$700 to US$2,800 a month. If I wanted to earn well, I had to hustle it to the max. Because the objects I created were non-functional, repeat customers were not very many. Once they had a set of my apples and a few Sleep Angels, most would move on. I had to continually build new markets, and since my product line was quite unusual, I had to constantly tell people what it was all about. It was time-consuming work, and on top of that I had to sew new things all the time.
Since one of my major selling points was the originality of my products, I had to always be creating original things – first the Sleep Angels, then the apples and pears, then swans, after that mini swans, then the freehand embroidered pillows, then handstamped lavender sachets…
I’ve been mulling over it for a long time, and have decided that this is not a rhythm that I can keep up. Especially not with a young child to take care of.
I have no illusions, I know that this new venture of bags and jewelry will also require a lot of work, but I am thinking that the products, being recognizable and functional, will more easily sell themselves. Anyway, my creativity in its present practical state seems more satisfied. No more irritating voice asking me what it’s all for.
A trip to 7100 Islands
This blog has been sleeping (and for 5 months, ack!), but now it’s time to wake up. The reason for the very long break is that I was at work on a new project, a line of home decor and fashion products colorful and bright. The new company is something I created with my friend Nola Andaya-Milani. It’s called 7100 Islands, and you can look at our blog here, and the online shop here.
From now on, I promise, at least once a week (maybe more), I’ll be posting here about fabric apples and pears, life and work in France, vintage furniture and what-nots.
Stay tuned and bisous!
A quick trip to Brussels
It’s been a long time since I’ve travelled any place alone, and so last weekend it was a real treat for me to go visit a friend in Brussels. One evening, I was all by myself, and sat on a ledge in Brussel’s famous Grand Place. Impressive, isn’t it?
* Apol
Candy!
Our village is celebrating its annual festival right now, 10 days of merry-making for everybody. One of the joys of walking around a village in a party mood is happening upon a stand filled with glistening red candy apples, sweet almonds cooked right on the spot, and trays upon trays upon tray upon trays of multi-colored candy. This is bliss:
Favorite photos
I love taking photos for the shop, and these three here are among my list of current favorites, probably because they all scare me just a little bit.
A clay statue of a bent old man carrying an umbrella.
A child’s head, made of stone.
An antique photo negative on a glass sheet
Pierre and the little one are recovering from their respective sicknesses over here. Hope your week is turning out good!
*Apol
A trip to Marseille
Everybody except Apol is sick at home right now, so there’s been no sewing nor vintage goods-hunting going on for the past few days, but we did manage a quick trip to Marseille recently.
First we had to find our friends’ apartment in the labyrinthine quarter of Le Panier. There were many streets made up of steep stairs to climb. We were a little bit out of breath after a little while, but country mice out in the city that we were, enjoyed looking at the graffiti on the walls and the layers of peeling posters.
We went to a quirky little restaurant called La Passarelle, where the decor was guingette-inspired quirky; the menu written on school notebooks and the wine list scribbled on a piece of crumpled paper that the waitress pulled out of her jeans pocket. We were totally charmed… until the food arrived. It was all a little bit dry and really just so-so.
Then after-dinner drinks were at the terrace of this bar called Belle Vue that faced the port. We were four sharing just a bottle of rose wine, so alcohol had nothing to do with why this photo of the Notre-Dame de La Garde is looking like this. We were trying to be artsy!
Summer thank-you list
Before the holiday rushing-all-about begins and we forget, we want to remind ourselves that, despite the cantankerous weather, this has been a fairly great summer. A partial list of what made it special:
1. It began with barefoot walks on the beach as soon as it was warm enough so that our toes did not freeze off.
2. We went away somewhere tropical and warm (okay, this was a few weeks before the official start of summer, but hey it must still count!).
3. We did not let the figs rot on the trees this year – instead we made jars and jars of jam.
4. Lots of fun had at all those warm-weather flea markets and vintage festivals.
5. Finding out that pears this tiny exist.
Posted in Life and Stuff
Tagged beach, france, jams, south of France, summer, vacation
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Summer Sale!
Yes, it is. At the shop, we’re offering 25% off more than 50 pieces in our collection of French vintage objects and handmade home décor. You can find these deals in our Sale section.
Please use the coupon code “goodbyesummer” when you are checking out for the discount to be applied. (P.S. You have to enter the code in the Etsy checkout section and not in the Paypal payment form, okay?)
See you at the shop (I hope!).
These cute vintage jam jars are at 25% off.
Our French summer
We are finally getting some proper hot summer days over here, finally hearing the word “canicule” pronounced by the weather people. It’s about time as we’ve had enough of grey rainy days.
We went to the beach over the weekend, again to Beauduc, and I am still wondering if these wooden poles they put on the sides of the road on the way there are some kind of artsy chairs for the seagulls?
I also have to find out if this upcycled (a word I learned at Etsy!) trailer home is the unofficial lifeguard’s station.
Whatever it is, the view was good.
So we stayed to take photos of the sunset.
And I snapped myself a self-potrait.
Does summer really have to end?
* Apol
