I was certain there would be no Mulberries in 2024.
Here's the story about procuring this year's crop!
But first let's acknowledge it's been August already for over 2 weeks ... we're more than halfway through the year AND Summer has also peaked!
I've already started designing the Holiday Collection. It takes a lot of pre-planning.
Sitting on the roofdeck with a precious piece of pansy printed silk modal, it's hard not to feel the pressure. The more you know - the more you know, you don't know.
I tried to see how perfectly thin a roll I could create and found, after pulling a warp thread, that the fabric wasn't cut straight. I don't want frayed threads peaking out from these couture-finished baby rolled hems I'm sewing. I set the material down.
... check out this short clip.
I needed to purchase these Karen Kay Buckley specialty scissors.
The fabric I've used in this video is Silk Modal (see photo above).
It's a natural fabric ... a durable, ethereal marriage of sustainable cellulose fibre and silk. The beechwood provides strength and makes it easy to care for with the photo printed inks penetrating almost entirely through to the back.
And here is a shot of the Habotai Silk. It's pure silk ... a slightly thinner, more delicate, but yet still quite strong material.
I decided to couture-finish all four sides on this particular Furoshiki/Sarong and wondered also about adding the thin rainbow steel couture chain to weight the bottom and have decided to leave it as an option. The ink reactive printing penetrates slightly deeper through to the back of the Habotai (about 90% through). I've shown two sides in both photos to show both fabrics are very near double-sided.
They each arrived with 2 straight sides off the roll but were roughly cut from the roll. I had to recut the top and bottom as you can seen in the video, in order to get perfectly straight ends which allow for beautifully accurate rolled hems. I decided to couture-finish rolled seams on two sides of the Modal because, I feel, the raw edges on either side add to its low-sheen look and to go with a four-sided rolled hem on the light and airy shinier pure silk Habotai.
Now back to the Story at hand ...
The 'Original Mulberry Pansies' were purchased online, and on a whim, in early 2021, during the pandemic because they were so pretty. They were delivered in full bloom and I immediately began photographing the heck out of them. They made me so happy and I took so many photos as we waited until it was warm enough to pop them onto their Summer home on the roofdeck where they endured on-going photo shoots ... on the ground, in the air ... on the table, here & there.
Then, to my surprise, I received an e-mail. I was approached by a company in Quebec after they had seen some of my floral photos posted on Instagram. Would I like to have some of my photos sublimation printed. Yes I would. Thank. You. Very. Much. I chose some sweet pea shots along with THE MULBERRIES.
AND I chose a soft chiffon polyester after asking about natural, more sustainable fabrics but was told they weren't on offer. They did, though, agree for my request to have a 36" square Furoshiko printed and I use it for absolutely everything ... carting art supplies to and from the allotment, gardening tools, plants. It is sturdy enough to carry all my drawing and painting supplies back and forth without showing any wear or tear ... and the darker colours covered everything thrown at it!
About a minute into this video you can see them being used to cart tomatoes back home from the allotment.
Then, sadly, soon thereafter, they stopped printing this size. I was glad to be able to order another before they pulled them and used it to wrap Joy's Award painting in because she's an avid gardener, too, as well as a fellow painter.
Furoshiki are basically traditional Japanese cloths used to wrap and transport things. There is a history of them being used to wrap precious items, clothing while using public baths, bento boxes, etc. I initially came to understand the concept when Mom used hemmed fabric scraps, year-after-year, to wrap some of our Christmas presents.
I was eventually able to find another Montreal-based company to print on natural, more environment-friendly, sustainable fabrics I had first hoped for but they don't finish the hems. So I immediately birthday-gifted myself with an online couture sewing course taught by a professional haute-couture embroiderer for Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Saint Laurent, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton and began to learn some sewing tricks of the trade. That was it, I was hooked and continued taking every couture course online I could find. There are surprisingly many.
The year, I lost access to the finished furoshikos, I also lost access to my lovely pansies. They went missing, here, in Canada for two years.
Speed ahead now to March 2024 ...
I received an e-mail from THE MULBERRIES' garden centre notifying me that they'd located some and there were a few available. Without thinking, I put them in my cart and then discovered delivery was no longer available.
There was a ray of hope, though.
They had an after-hours pick-up shed!
It meant I would need to venture further than I was comfortable in my old beater of a 2005 Toyota Echo.
I dialed my mechanic and was told to get her over there ASAP.
I swear my pointer finger 'knee-jerk' pushed send.
There was no way out but up. I got my hair into a ponytail, plunked my baseball cap on and drove 2 short blocks East to the garage with a CAA envelope in hand, in case, and my phone in my lap. I had not been that far afield in 2 years.
It was an overly stimulating day and it was about to get even more exciting the next day.
The worst thunderstorm came out of nowhere. The sun all but disappeared and water fluttered down from the skies in sheets, then quilts ... and duvets!
But this was my big day.
I had pushed the button on the 3 mulberry pansy plants, googled and gotten 3 different maps to the same address and off I set.
I could barely see a foot in front of me but I found that shed.
Then there was the combination lock that just wouldn't open.
I pushed all the numbers a few times then decided to try pushing them all down past the line to the very edge of the lock and BINGO ... then no Pansiolas in the shed!
My heart broke. Just a bunch of greenery in pots. I took them and put the lock back on the latch. The drive home was as wet inside the car as it was out. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with what was sitting on the floor of the passengers seat.
Then the realization hit. The blooms hadn't yet begun to blossom and given time, they would!
I was so glad I figured this out before calling to ask what had gone so horribly wrong.
It took these rare and delicate beauties-to-be to get me outside my comfort zone - out from inside the safety of my own home for the first time this year.
For context: the year before I had only just started to venture out again to the allotment in my car.