Fabric Fanatics

What makes you fanatical? When my children were little it was those little stuffed animals called beanie babies. They loved building a collection and searching for their favorite animals when they were in a new store. For my sister it is fall foliage. She lives in a part of the United States that most would consider absolutely gorgeous but come October she yearns for the gold, orange and red hues of the leaves, fields of pumpkins and the smell of the crisp air in the northeastern part of the United States. And me? Well I do confess that a chocolate shop can raise my blood pressure but so can a fabric store. You're not surprised are you? We were recently asked where we get our fabrics for the stoles at Carrot Top Studio. Here are a few examples of our many sources...

Commercial fabrics, like in this stole, are accentuated with hand painted details. The base blue of this stole is very common fabric from a national retailer. The border is specialty fabric purchased from an online quilt store.

It's exciting to be able to use fabric that supports ministries like this border fabric that is from the Congo Cloth Connection. Our purchase of this fabric supports a ministry of the Mennonite church where they believe "every stitch is a prayer" and which they build relationships with their brothers and sisters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We have used some of their fabric in a red stole here and this fall will debut one in green and one in purple.

We are slowly finding more resources for eco-friendly fabrics such as the tone on tone white background fabric of this labyrinth stole. Bamboo is a sustainable plant because it grows so quickly. We also like it because the texture is silky smooth.

Supporting other artists with our fabric purchases has been quite a privilege. We offer a line of stoles using hand dyed silk used in the appliques. The silk is dyed in LaCroix, Haiti by a delightful group of young women. Our purchase of the silk and in turn your purchase (we give 50% back) supports the women's education fund.

Lastly we haunt several different sources for vintage fabric. We consider this re-purposing of the fabric to be another earth friendly source that is good for our stoles and honors this world's creation by not allowing good fabric to end up in a landfill. We have several of these on the cutting table to add to our new fall inventory. We're also working on stoles created out of fair trade fabric. We dream of using a lot of fair trade fabric but we've sadly been challenged with finding resources that are affordable so we can keep our price point in a good spot for our clients. We'll keep searching for fabrics here and there. You can make sure to stay tuned to the website and our Facebook page to see what's new!

Inspiration from Tomie dePaola

We're drawing a close to summer here in Pittsburgh, PA where our studio is located. But this doesn't mean we can't sneak in some unstructured days that include reading just for fun. This weekend we breezed through Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories by Barbara Elleman. I used dePaola books when I was teaching and especially loved The Art Lesson because it expressed a lot of the sentiment as to why I became an art teacher. I am drawn to dePaola's illustrations, the well balanced artistic layouts and incredibly thought out details of the pages of his books. It was a lovely surprise and thrill to read in this biography that the artist briefly designed church vestments! 

 I additionally was drawn to this statement," In Books and Religion, writer Mary Zeman, an artist and educator interested int he spiritual growth of children, comments that [dePaola's] voice is that of a receptive man,whose approach to his work betrays what Thomas Merton once described as the willingness of saints 'to answer the secret voice of God calling--to take a risk and venture by faith outside the reassuring and protective limits of our five senses.'" This makes me think of worship, how we do it, see it, experience it, etc. I understand and embrace that the visual is just one component.

To make the reader aware of how symbols are important to this artist's work the author explains the possibly puzzling image of Mary, the mother of Jesus on one of dePaola's book jackets who is holding an apple. Of course this fruit is more typically associated with Eve in the Old Testament. Here it is appropriate as a symbol for the virgin Mary because it was her son who took away the curse of sin. The artist didn't originate this symbol as the apple was used this way in medieval paintings. But it is exciting to know that dePaola applies his knowledge of the past to encourage us to make visual connections today. Learning how dePaola is drawn to the history and use of religious symbols helps me to further understand why I have felt a connection and admiration to his work. I certainly don't have the artistic credibility of dePaola but I'd like to think that we put similar thought and credibility into the how and why we use symbols in our work at Carrot Top Studio. 

Signs and Symbols

This week's gospel lectionary text is John 6:24-35. Using signs and symbols is a great tool 
throughout the Bible and this is a story in which bread becomes "I am the bread of life", a symbol for Jesus Christ. Some symbols are important to the culture of the time but bread is still one we can relate to today. 


The lines and colors in this art make me think of the energy and fuel we receive from actually eating a loaf of bread but is also symbolic of the life we receive through Jesus Christ. We see similar images in our worship spaces including sheaves of wheat which is a reference to bread.

Bread of Life by Kennedy A Paizs

In the studio we too use the bread or wheat symbols whenever we can. For example on these two stoles...

Go here to see this ordination stole.

This Communion stole can be seen on the website here.

The teacher in me is always looking for connections and when I stumbled up this statement by Dietrich Bonhoeffer it seemed like a perfect sentiment to end this post with. He said, "The table fellowship of Christians implies obligation. It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own. We share our bread. Thus we are firmly bound to one another not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being. The one bread that is given to our fellowship links us together in a firm covenant  Now none dares go hungry as long as another has bread, and anyone who breaks this fellowship of the physical life also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit."