Spring and We're Moving

We announced it a few months back, and we're doing it now: La Pomme Home, it's our new blog with a spanking new address, www.lapommehome.com. Follow us there!

10 Percent Off Everything!

I am off and away.

Say yey! As announced, I'm off for a break to Africa from 9 April to 4 May, but La Pomme will remain open. Shipping will be delayed (your orders will begin shipping on the first week of May), but it will be your chance to get 10 percent off anything you buy at the shop. So both you and I get to have fun :)

Just type in the coupon code "vacationhey" when you checkout your purchases at the online shop and your discount will be automatically applied.

If you have any questions, send me a message through the shop. It may take me some time to respond, as I won't have access to the Internet all the time, but I will get back to you.

See you soon!

Moving

Movement seems to be the word to describe life these days. For one thing, my sister and I are working on La Pomme's new blog home, and should be launching that real soon. I promise - no, I swear! - that when that is launched I will be blogging so much more regularly that I am doing at the moment.

For another, husband, baby, and I are going to Africa for a few weeks to take a break from our normal hustle and bustle. We plan to do some serious chilling out, stay in places where there's no TV and no Internet connection, and just listen to the silence. Well, that, and wailing of the baby who, advanced as she was in walking and in growing teeth, has continued in her precocious ways and has hit her terrible twos many many months too early :)

Anyway. Let me make an announcement and say that if you've been wanting to get anything at the shop, please do so by 7 April so that I can ship your purchases off to you right away. Purchases made after this date will begin shipping in the first week of May.

Here are some new things we've stocked at the shop:

Vintage horn instruments.

Beer and lemonade bottles.

Carpenter's wooden vise to use as bookcases.

Reclaimed Postal Bags

Here are new photos of the vintage postal bags I made for my Reclaimed line. Two of them are still available at the shop.

Reclaimed Pillowcases

These pillowcases are recycled from vintage French ticking fabric. This kind of sturdy cotton was in the past used extensively in France to make mattresses. I found these pieces at various flea markets here in the south.

The idea for Reclaimed pillowcases came from seeing how my mother-in-law meticulously mended her children's clothes. Jeans were patched and re-patched at the knees. Holes in shirts were camouflaged with fabric of similar print. It spoke to me of love, frugality, and a natural environmental awareness.

Vintage "toile à matelas," or ticking fabric is quite popular in France now. Many crafters use them to make bags and scented sachets. Most, however, look for fabric in almost-pristine condition. Lengths that have too many holes or that are stained are ignored. And yet these pieces to me are somehow more interesting than their fresher counterparts. They have lived - if we can apply the term to inanimate objects - and are not afraid to show it.

I have taken the tattered and stained vintage ticking I have collected, and mended them, repairing holes and patching over major stains. The original mending I found on them, those made by previous owners, I have left intact. Some stains I left alone - proud marks of the fabric's history.

You can find these pillowcases at the Reclaimed section of the shop.

Reclaimed Pincushions

The first pieces of my spring collection, these are now at the shop.

Recycled Vintage Postal Bags

From my new collection, Reclaimed. Soon at the shop.

Boat on a Linen River

Today I'm wishing to escape to somewhere far away...

A Bientot, Apples, Pears, and Angels

I'm also a writer. It's not something I talk a lot about here on this blog, but I write speculative fiction, some of which have gotten published in magazines and book anthologies; and in 2009 I published a book of essays. To continue calling myself a writer, however, I have got to write. In 2010, all that I had published were stuff that I had written in the years before. I am disappointed with myself.

I have decided to make time for words, and that means having to give up a bit of my sewing.


My much-loved plush apples and pears, as well as my lavender sachets and scented angels, will be available at the shop only until 27 February 5 March. After the 5th, I will only be accepting orders for them for weddings. Individuals who want to order them for their homes should do so before 27 February, or wait until September when they will be put back in stock, in time for the holidays.

Something to look forward to: End of February, I will begin putting up online pieces from Reclaimed, my new collection of functional home accessories made 100-percent from recycled fabric. Think mended and tattered made hip :) The bags, cushion covers, tea towels, and scented sachets in this collection will be all ready to ship.

March I'll be hunkering down in front of the computer, and I swear I'm going to be writing or else cut my fingers off! Wish me luck.


As a way to say "A bientot, see you soon," to my plush fruits and angels, here I am dedicating to them one of my stories. It's called "The Sewing Project," and you can find it by clicking here.

Valentine Night Sewing

Celebrating Valentine's day is just not our thing, so tonight, while the husband watches a film, I plan to finish sewing up the pincushions made from scraps of fabric that I stamped for past projects. They're for my new collection, coming soon at the shop. As you can see from the photo, the collection is called Reclaimed.
To all those who are celebrating V-day, enjoy and be sure to exchange plenty of kisses!

Uhmmm, Excuse Me....

... but I've realized - thanks to people much smarter than I am - that changing blogs right now, to the Wordpress address I mentioned in my previous post, would be a foolish thing to do because I had already bought a domain name, and this domain name can very well be the address of my new blog. So my sister is working on that (because I really am a techie-idiot), and we'll be launching the new blog under my very own domain name really soon. Meanwhile I am staying put and blogging right here. Really sorry for the confusion; I can be a real flake sometimes.

Everything else I said holds true, however. Starting now I'll be blogging mainly about my sewing and vintage-hunting, with the occasional "oh-look-what-inspired-me-recently" post. Things more personal you can find in my personal Facebook page. Fans of Provenciana, the book published in 2009 from the blog I wrote of the same name, should go to Facebook too. I'll be posting wacky new essays there soon. (I'm flaky, but trying oh-so-hard to organize my online life now!)

In the meanwhile, go take a look at some of this weekend's vintage finds which I'll be listing in the shop soon:

Antique pharmacy bottles
(Hey, these sold as I was writing this post-yippee!)

Old tin boxes

A dame-jeanne

We're Moving!

Reorganizing things, and because I've been wanting a change, I am now blogging over at French Objects. This new blog will be more about stories about and photos of vintage finds and my sewn creations. I'm writing it together with the hubby. Personal life stuff (for those not yet sick and tired of my never-ending photos of Lilou and Pierre, for example :D) will now be posted at my Facebook account (my personal account, and not the sad, neglected fan page). See you over at French Objects then! It is still very new, I'm still building it, but you can already read a first post, which is about this:

Vintage Finds

It's grey Monday here in the south of France, but the weekend was all bright sun and blue skies, perfect weather for going to the puces and brocantes, where we found a lot of the battered, decayed, and falling-apart-but-strangely-beautiful objects that I love. Some of them will be put up for sale at the shop this week, but some I'm keeping, like a box of old natural twine and a rusty old cup:

Work and Play

I'm sewing new things, and it feels very good! In the mornings when my husband takes care of Lilou for a couple of hours, I almost run to the mobile home that we have transformed into my work space so I can get at it, that's how excited I am.

I've been making pillow cases, table napkins, pincushions, lavender bags (of course!), and even tote bags. All from recycled vintage fabric, washed and mended, and given new life. This is a peek at what it all kind of looks like:

I can remember when the seed for this new collection was planted in my head; it was about seven years ago when my husband unearthed a few of his old jeans from when he was still a teenager. The jeans had been patched and mended all over by my mother-in-law, a French country housewife. I was struck by how it spoke of frugality and of a great respect for the continued usefulness of objects, so different from the throwaway culture that I had been immersed in. Also: I kept thinking that the sewing and patching looked so artistic somehow. I know I kept a piece of one of those old jeans somewhere... I will post a photo as soon as I find it.

When I'm not working, I'm forcing myself to go out and go for walks with the little one, despite the often -bad weather. Being cooped up indoors for too long makes me cranky, I find. Here is a photo I took two days ago. In the distance you can see my mobile home work space.

Had My Cake and Ate It Too

Yesterday was my birthday. My husband took me out to dinner at a restaurant we've been wanting to try for the longest time while mom-in-law looked after the baby. There were flowers, champagne, a great cake, and gifts to open. I have this thing about my birthdays, you know, something I carry over from childhood, that they never get celebrated because everybody is all celebrated out just after the holidays; so when that beautiful chocolate cake came out of the kitchen complete with those sparkly little candle thingies, I was a very happy girl.

Afterwards, I thought about sitting down to write some resolutions, but life is just too intense at the moment. I don't have much quiet time for the kind of thinking resolutions-making demand. So I'll let those go for now, and just live life as it comes.

P.S. As I write this, I am working into that cake so that it has gotten much smaller than how it looks in the picture. Burp.

On My Work Table

Ragged edges, vintage white cotton, winter light, a found skeleton key - a peek at what I'm currently up to.

Gardening in Winter

I am working on a new collection, which will be ready in February. I am concentrating on making functional pieces, and on using materials found and reclaimed. My goal is to not use anything new in the making of these objects, except for thread. The process is a lot more organic than usual; I have always been drawn to the imperfections and particularities that I find in vintage fabric, a hole or a stain maybe, so I am letting these holes and stains be, leaving them in as part of the finished object.

With my head up there in the air, in a creative cloud somewhere, I thought I'd share with you my recent discovery for greening up my interiors these winter months - aerial plants. At a Christmas market, I happened upon a vendor from Montpellier selling them. They're not exactly cheap, from 4€ to 12€ a piece, so I got just three. Then I installed them on dry branches, and hung them up on a white wall. Here is how they look: