Hello dear friends! It has been a while since I have posted here. After Semana Santa we took advantage of the seasonal dip in tourism in Antigua to do some internal restructuring. These past couple months I have been taken away from my creative space, and I'm afraid I have been very uninspired. But with the bulk of it behind us now I can finally get back to doing what I love the most: creating. I have found that the best way to get back into the "creative mood" after being away from it for a while is to start with small projects. Just like with any muscle group your creative muscles need a warm-up. So recently I sat down and got to making some of the little accessories we sometimes carry here in the shop, particularly the handbags. I do quite enjoy making these as they remind me of when I had just started out in life with my best friend and our small fashion atelier in Modena.
Before I go on, some of you might remember a similar post from this time last year in which I introduce the handbags we make using the left-overs of our fabrics that are too precious to throw out. If you want to read that you can see that post here. Today I just want to show off the results as I really like how they came out. For the first time I tried using our "kirpi" fabric on one of our handbags, and I have to say they came out lovely! So much so that they were sold out before I even had a chance to take a decent set of photos! Before you ask, "kirpi" is not an official name for this kind of technique, in fact I don't really know if there is an official name for it. This is just the name we came up for it in-house, which is actually what we do for a lot of our fabrics!
I suppose what I really enjoyed about making these was reconnecting with that young twenty-something all those years ago starting out in fashion. At that age I would of never imagined I would of ended up in Guatemala owning my own textile company! Back in those days we were all hope and energy, but with a serious lack of experience. More than once we fell flat on our face! At the risk of sounding trite it really does go to show you how unexpected and full of surprises life ends up being. A few years back my best friend Patrizia with whom I opened that atelier passed away. I miss her terribly much, and while it may make me sad sometimes, making little things like this remind me of those blissful happy times at the beginning of my journey.
As always dear friends of Loom Tree, thank you for reading. And remember to drop in on us from time to time when you're in Antigua to see what new things we have cooked up!
From beautiful Antigua Guatemala,
Carmen