american made

October 20, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Fall Preparations for Winter

This year, fall on New Mexico’s desert high plains has been unseasonably warm, pushing thoughts of winter into the distant future. But, the signs of winter’s approach are everywhere, and they should be unmistakable. 365 bales of hay just arrived in the barn to the delight of the alpacas. This cache is intended to get us through the winter and beyond the first cut of next year’s grass hay.

Three cords of firewood are looking gray and seasoned, ready for the recently cleaned wood stove.

Gardens have lost their vibrant colors, except for the vines, which turned an electric orange.

All the fields are brown and the tumbleweeds are stacking up along our fence lines, waiting to be made into the Southwest’s version of snowmen. Our alpacas are getting that fluffy, cuddly look that assures them of being good and warm through the next several months, and us that there will be another fleece harvest come spring.

Signs of winter’s approach abound in the Fabric Design Center as well. Sandy is now calling for double sheets of fabric from which to design our garments that much more snugly and warm. White, green, and light fawn fabrics of last summer have given way to blacks, dark grays and browns for the alluring look of winter and warmth. Fall’s signs are everywhere telling us winter is on its way. Are you prepared?

October 15, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Just Like a Spider

Through the summer and into the fall the spiders work overtime to decorate our house with complex webs. By the time Halloween comes around, we look a bit ominous. I find something fascinating about spiders and their earnest and dedicated work.

Today while enjoying an unusually warm fall day outside the loom room, we were laughing about how we are so like the spider. We make fabric, we work industriously, we organize our time for production. This week Sandy is making beautiful felted fabrics for hats, fingerless gloves and lovely wraps, as well as some unique felt pieces for small projects.

We will get the finished product to our boutiques – Handwoven Originals at the Inn at Loretto shops in Santa Fe, Mooncat Fiber (they already have our fingerless gloves) and our newest boutique Artemisia Artwear, both in Taos. We will also rev up our website with a gloves section. And while you are browsing the store, check out our cool new basic felted fabric at Artisan Fabrics (some of which is pictured above).

October 6, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

New Silver Grey, Rich Cinnamon and True Black Outerwear Fabric

We are ready to sell our heavier weight alpaca fabrics for winter jackets and coats. Silpaca Outerwear contains double the amount of alpaca/merino fiber that we use to make our lightweight summer/office silpaca fabrics. This warm fabric will make a lovely coat, as you can see from the coats pictured below. What you can’t tell from a picture is just how light weight it is, particularly when compared to wool.

One of the other great characteristics of alpaca that make it a great outdoor fabric is water’s tendency to bead up on it instead of soaking in. We offer this fabric in three beautiful colors: silver grey, a rich cinnamon brown and true black. The fabric is $54 per yard and most fabrics are 40 to 42″ wide. We can also make most of our Silpaca Inner Weight fabric in the outerwear weight.

$20 per yard add on for thick and thin yarn or dyed merino embellishments, such as the kaleidoscope embellishment pictured on the black fabric.

Hurry and order this great fabric before the snows begin!

September 8, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

On The Road

Now that we are on the road traveling to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the Western Design Conference, it feels good to just drink in the beauty of the western skies and mountains and to feel the coolness of Fall.

It has been a busy summer designing new fabrics and new apparel designs to showcase the characteristics of these alpaca textiles. We have yet to decide which of these items we will enter into the design competition at the WDC. Both will be on the runway, with four other new looks, on Thursday evening.

Possibility #1

We call this the Osita coat. I wanted to make a fabric that contrasted the same rich blacks, browns and greys we see in our dog Osita’s fur. Osita means “little bear” in Spanish. To make this fabric I combined the fibers of Jazzman ( a true black), Cinnamon (yep, that lovely cinnamon color) and Sustantivo (grey). What you can’t appreciate from this photo is the remarkable soft handle of this fabric; it’s a lot like the softness of O’s fur.

Possibility #2

Now this is a different kind of jacket altogether.

Inspired by a long drive through NM and CO after glorious rains brought sunflowers and other wild flowers into bloom, I call this “Just Add Water.” I first used pastels to practice paint my design on the paper pattern pieces. After I cut out the blue silk, I felted the same design, using dyed fibers and yarns. I finished by painting with silk luminescent paints that add shimmer or water and light. Clouds, blue skies, sunflowers and a dragonfly.

Tomorrow, Wyoming for the first time. It will be fun! I can’t wait to see which jacket gets entered and how we do.

Sandy

September 1, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Labor Day – Celebrating Everyone Who Makes It Happen

Shearing day, 2015. Photo courtesy Neala McCarten.

Labor Day, the first Monday of September, is a celebration of the American worker. Although the holiday is often associated with organized labor, to me it is a time to recognize those individuals who roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty making things happen in unison with others.

Yep, Labor Day is another of those days that cause me to reflect. Sandy and I have been getting ready for our biggest show of the year, the Western Design Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sept., 10-13, 2015. As well as a selling opportunity, WDC is an event where many varieties of creativity are celebrated and recognized. As we inventory our fabric creations and apparel, we talk about all the individuals whose hard work makes the finished product possible. Individual labor in unison with others for the greater good.

For us, it all starts with the alpacas and the annual clip that makes all this possible. We could not run both businesses (Whispering Spirit Alpacas and Whispirit) without Danita Coulter, who provides the daily loving care to the alpacas. Peter Connelly of Shorn is the professional shearer who arrives annually in May. All of our friends and neighbors who volunteer to the shearing process (Stella & Harold Evensen, Kris & Bob Staten, Cathy & Chuck McManus, Kelly Koepke, Gretchen Doyle and Heather, Chris & Emily Briggs) help us gather our harvest.

After harvesting, the clip is sent to mills who work with our specifications to create the batts from which we create our fabrics. Fiber milling is dark and lonely work. These are small mom & pop, plus maybe a couple of other workers, operations. Thank you Chuck Armstrong of Evergreen Fiber Mill, Sally & Jay Brandon of The Shepard’s Fiber Mill, Terri Stramba of Stramba Farm Mill and Lyn Riffel of Wild West Fiber Mill.

Our fabric creations are born on the FeltLOOM. Thank you Don Bowles & Lanette Freitag for inventing that wonderful machine. This machine was the missing link in Sandy’s envisioning of making drapeable fabric out our alpaca; we use it every day and it is a mule.

The garment construction and finish sewing is completed by Heather Briggs, an independent seamstress, or Sara Tafoya of Sew Whateva. Many other have played roles in helping us learn to construct garments, too numerous to name.

We have not named the numerous people who help us with bringing these creative items to market. That will be its own blog. But, you know who you are and know we appreciate your labors on our behalf especially on this Labor Day.

Sandy and I hope that each of you will find enormous pride in your individual labor and creativity that is a unique and an integral part of our finished product.

Happy Labor Day to all ……… until next week …………. Lee