Check out our Yard Sale -- in celebration of National Garden Month, we've put some splendid plant- and flower-themed fabrics on sale! Our brand new Persimmon/Seed Bloom is one of these fabrics; it's a wonderful upholstery-weight material that is marvelous for home dec, crafts, and even clothing. The ever-popular Criss-Cross Tops pattern is also on sale, along with quite a few other things. Check them out!
Now, back to actually gardening, which you can of course do while wearing wonderful organic clothes that you've made from our fabrics!
Few people deny that homegrown vegetables generally taste better than conventional, store-bought ones; the classic example is that of a fresh, sweet tomato just plucked from the plant compared with a tasteless supermarket one that was picked early and shipped a thousand miles. Indeed, the desire for good tomatoes is often the reason that people start gardening! In recognition of that, the need to have just one good gardening experience, check out the the One Pot Pledge, from the UK's Garden Organic, "the national charity for organic growing." Dedicated to getting people who've never grown their own food to try at least one pot's worth this year, it has all sorts of help and inspiration for these beginning gardeners. KidsGardening.org is, of course, devoted to encouraging kids to garden; teacher resources and more can be found there. It's wonderful for kids to have a real connection to their food, and many children will happily eat vegetables they've helped grow even if they weren't adventurous eaters before.
In both public and private initiatives, cities are encouraging their residents to start Victory Gardens (sometimes called Recession Gardens, in a modern update to the name); one such example is Victory Gardens San Diego. Indeed, an ever-increasing amount of people are learning how to garden, frequently out of financial necessity. (This NYTimes article about Latino gardens in San Jose was fascinating -- and as a side note, I loved learning that an old friend, Poncho Guevara, was instrumental in the program's success!) Even my little neighborhood is forming a community garden -- one family is contributing the land, another loaned us a tractor for rototilling (a necessity in never-before farmed land in New Mexico!), I'll be supplying the seeds (by the way, here's a great page discussing how to get free and low-cost seeds), someone else is fencing it in, etc. With so many people out of work -- and still wanting to eat healthy, fresh food -- the garden will be a true benefit to us all!
So however you want to do it -- a single plant, a schoolyard garden, your entire backyard, or a large farm -- go out and get your hands dirty. The rewards are stupendous, and oh-so-tasty!
After spending far too long admiring and photographing these new fabrics, I've finally added them to the website. The tela collection currently contains four designs, each one printed on both sateen and a hemp/organic cotton blend. Check them out: Inari Sateen and Hemp/Organic Cotton; Honeycomb Sateen and Hemp/Organic Cotton; Prehistory Sateen and Hemp/Organic Cotton; and Stroll Sateen and Hemp/Organic Cotton.