Alabama Chanin

 The business has grown so fast. From a personal house to a huge ware house in a industrial park. She has a opened a cafe that offers events to the locals.

 I spend a week at Alabama Chanin's School of Making last week. It was very inspiring.

 This was the breakfast that was served each day. There was a healthy lunch as well. Toward the back of the picture is a retail store where she sells some hand sewn, but mostly sewing machine organic cotton knits. She has started in the last year a line of wedding dresses as well. She has gourmet kitchen tools and dishes and cook books. She serves some of her family recipes like Grandma's buttermilk biscuits and gravy.

 This is the first shelve of the tunic that I am making. It has a top layer of natural organic knit cotton and the under layer is pewter knit. The stencil was sprayed on with pearl paint. You can't tell from the picture but pewter, a grey has a lavender cast to it. Everything is done by hand. Even the sewing of the seams. Those of us that like detail, it is a perfect match. Perfection comes in handy too.

 These are a couple of samples of hand stitching that caught my eye.

 This one I decided to make a swing skirt in the natural color knit and cotton ribbon embroidered. This will layer very well with my tunic.

This was a shirt sample that shows the use of several of the embroidery stitches that can be hand sewn on garments.