Table Dressing "The final product had to be made by hand, line by line, just as Chanin’s textiles are produced stitch by careful stitch. Bailey calls the process etching, but it is closely related to the sgraffito technique used to decorate walls since the Classical era. In architecture, two layers of tinted plaster are applied to the wall, and then a craftsman scrapes through the top coat to reveal the color beneath. For the new ceramics, a white glaze is sprayed over a base coat of blue, red or gray and an artist then scratches through the top layer with...
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Stories are Gifts
"Stories are gifts meant to be shared. A holiday story from our family to yours."
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Southern Cross-Stitch "After almost a decade working as a stylist and designer in Vienna, Austria, Natalie 'Alabama' Chanin found herself back in the USA and in search of something special to wear to a New York City event. She found a novel way of attacking this eternal girlie dilemma by deconstructing a t-shirt, then hand-stitching it back together with the seams on the outside and some appliques on the front.'I found that it had been a very long time since I had made something with my own two hands,' says Chanin. 'That process of making rather than buying excited me....
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Alabama Chanin
"'New company, new name!' says Natalie Chanin, second-time Fashion Fund finalist (her first run was in 2005, when her label was called Project Alabama). Fortunately, some things never change. Her clothing is still stitched by local artisans in Florence, Alabama, out of organic materials, and not a single scrap goes to waste (some fabric gets baled and made into couches). And they've still got a homespun-but-modern look (striped pieces for spring were inspired by Agnes Martin paintings). 'It has to be sustainable, and it has to be beautiful,' Chanin says."
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The Slow Life Picks Up Speed “'I have a little spiel I like to give about thread,' Natalie Chanin said the other day. 'The ladies laugh at me and call it my Oprah moment, but here’s how it goes: It’s called loving your thread, and it’s all about talking to the thread, coaxing it to take the path of least resistance. At the crux of it, that’s what Slow Design is all about.' Ms. Chanin runs a company, Alabama Chanin, that sells exquisite hand-stitched garments made from old T-shirts and home goods like flea market chairs with seats woven out...
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Alabama's Best Covered-Dish Dinner
"In the Northwestern towns of Tuscumbia, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Florence, known collectively as the Shoals, a community of homegrown artists, designers and cultural provocateurs gathers each month for potluck dinner. By and large, they are not cooks trade. Instead, they are cooks by habit and social inclination. Surety with a cast-iron skillet is bred in their bones."
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