Organic Lavender Products

In fitting with the whole environmental and organic philosophy, I wanted to come up with products which enabled us to use up the remnants of printed organic fabrics we had left after cutting our garments to avoid wastage.

Thea & Sami now have these beautiful lavender filled products available on-line such as the eye pillow and the trio of lavender sachets tied with hemp twine.  They are filled with pure dried lavender, sourced from an Australian farm in Victoria that adopts organic farming methods.  Lavender is a hardy plant that is naturally drought-resistant and grows without chemical pesticides or herbicides. Harvesting is done by traditional hand methods. I only wish that you could smell how good these are! They are very destressing.

I have also researched biodegradable packaging which is not the same as degradable packaging. Some plastics can be degradable but release chemicals as they breakdown into the soil. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that cellophane is not plastic but celloluse, made from trees that are farmed and are sustainably harvested for this purpose. Cellophane is 100% biodegradable and can be safely used in your compost heap so I have chosen it as packaging our lavender products.

I will be listing a surprise soon so please start leaving your comments as I will be giving away one of our new products on December 10th.  Anyone who leaves a comment will be going into the draw.

Keep checking this blog for more information on the giveaway.

Befriending the Beast

I finally got around to using my new (actually pre-owned) textile dryer last week. This was a major achievement as it was delivered to me without anybody having demonstrated its use to me. When I studied textile design at Sheridan College (Canada), our school studio had a heat-box which was like a giant oven for curing the fabrics. So there was some initial apprehension and procrastination before I decided that my first fabric order of 10 metres (for somebody else) was the right time to take the leap and get over my fear of the unknown beast. I certainly didn't want to be ironing 10 metres by hand in order to heat-set the inks although have done so in the past.




Now I love it and wonder how I could have ever lived without it!? I was smart enough not to feed the fabric through without performing the necessary technical tests and you can see by the colour of the two samples below that you can't trust the manufacturers' guidelines. The swatch on the left is the same white linen but came out quite scorched, even though the colour is quite nice. Once I worked out the correct temperature and belt speed, the successful white fabric swatch was immediately washed in boiling hot water and beaten around. It was very professional; much like those machines you see at Ikea beating the chairs to death. I was so pleased that it remained totally colour-fast.

I will be listing this pineapple fabric and others on our new on-line shopping site soon. There will be a category of natural printed fabrics and another for organic fabrics.

DEBUT

 

This was my space at Debut in September. The dress on the mannequin is our "Divine Dinner Dress" and it is made of hemp/silk and the obi belt is printed with Permaset Aqua inks. They are water-based and solvent-free.

Lessons I learnt at the trade show: buyers don't really care if it's eco or not. Price (and of course, style) matters more. The fashion retail industry is feeling the economy slow down so designing a true Autumn/Winter collection was not a good idea.

We are now designing trans-seasonal pieces and are working on some lovely printed and stylish organic jersey pieces that will be available on an on-going basis. Of course, fabric prices have risen with the devaluation of the Australian dollar recently as almost all fabrics are imported. One has to counteract material costs with simpler tailoring.

I did enjoy meeting the other talented designers at Debut. One that particularly stood out was Katelyn Aslett. Katelyn sources vintage cardigans, dyes them and then hand-felts on beautiful collars, trims, flowers, etc. I was fortunate enough to acquire the beautiful cardigan seen here in the photo. This was her stand at Fashion Exposed.


 

My Black Eye

I really wish I was one of those people that was consistent with their blogging but alas, I am not. I thought I would begin my come-back with the story behind my black eye. And this photo is taken days after the "incident" when the swelling and the colour had somewhat improved.

I did not have a good time during my recent trip to Victoria. I was quite ill with a head cold leading up to Debut but could not spare the time to fully recover and after a disappointing trade show, we decided to spend a few relaxing days in the Mornington Peninsular. It was anything but relaxing!

In my previous entry, I told you how wonderful the Welcome Riding School was here in Queensland. However, I cannot say the same about the lack of safety at Gunnamatta Trail Rides. Contrary to the statement on their home page that their horses are well-behaved, I can assure you that they are not. I will never forget Houdini, who gave me my first black eye in my life. I had a bad feeling from the moment I sat on him and I could sense that he was restless.

As a fairly new rider, I did not appreciate being forced to trot when I made it clear that I was uncomfortable doing so but the worse part was that these horses are trained to follow the horse in front of them, no matter WHAT! When I tried to slow mine down, I was told not to bother as they needed to keep up. My horse would constantly stop abruptly when the others did and literally land on the backside of the horse it followed. This is what happened when I felt the biggest blow to the right side of my face. He had suddenly stopped on the home-stretch trot and this forced his head back and whack! straight into my face. Do you know how hard a horse's head is? I am only grateful that it wasn't the centre of my face as I would have ended up with a broken nose or missing teeth.

Mine was not the only horse that was misbehaving either, One of the staff members who was riding behind us, was on a horse that was uncontrollable and quite frightening and had reduced her to tears as a result. When we reached the beach, she had to swap with another staff member.

What a contrast to the conditions at Welcome. They tell you to leave plenty of space between horses, don't force you to ride at a pace you are not comfortable with and you are actually able to slow down or stop your horse if you need to.

So I do NOT recommend Gunnamatta Trail Rides unless you are very experienced. I did not even get a courtesy call after my visit to see if I was all right. For the next 3 days, I spent my holiday with ice packs on my face and my husband was given a lot of dirty looks as I accompanied him looking like a victim. The horse story didn't seem too believable.

Horses are like dogs!

 


I have been working so hard lately between making samples for our new collection and also finishing production of our Iron Lace Collection; due to hit the stores early September. To avoid total burn-out, I have been making sure that I take Sundays off. Well, more or less off as I have been using the time to take photos for our new Look Book (fashion catalogue for Buyers).

My husband and I went horse riding a couple of weekends ago at the Welcome Riding School in the beautiful Samford Valley and then I stopped outside a paddock.  Imagine my surprise when this horse started running towards me as I really wanted to take a distant shot of a horse against the glorious Australian country scenery.  I don't have much experience with horses so I had to laugh because he wouldn't move until I patted him.  He so reminded me of my dog who won't leave visitors alone until they acknowledge her very important presence.  I then realised that horses are like giant puppy dogs.

We took some wonderful images of our new Autumn/Winter collection last Thursday so some of these country shots will be serving as backgrounds. Stay tuned to see upcoming previews of our ECO Town and Country Collection. All hand-printed with our sustainable and organic fabrics.

Ragtrader

We are working like crazy to get our Autumn/Winter samples done for Fashion Exposed in September. Meanwhile, we were delighted that the image chosen for the Ragtrader article was one from Thea & Sami's Spring/Summer collection available from September in stores such as Bliss Ecowear.

Think Pink!

We had so much fun at Lyssy May's Think Pink Party held on Sunday afternoon, July the 20th. Thank you so much to all the ladies who came in response to the Thea & Sami VIP Newsletter. With donated prizes for raffle tickets and auction items from generous local businesses plus a percentage of Lyssy May & Thea & Sami sales, we managed to raise just over $1400 for the Wesley Hospital's Kim Walter's Choices Program.

For more photos and information on the day, check out Lyssy May's Blog.

I designed & printed my new Pink Cupcakes Tea-Towels just for the occasion but will continue selling them on-line or through Lyssy May. More colours to follow soon. Click here to see or purchase our sugary-sweet cupcakes tea-towels.