One of the most common requests I hear is for photos of our artisans weaving our Organic Cotton Turkish Towels (also known as pestemal - the Turkish word for traditional Turkish Towels). Each and every one of our pestemal is hand-loomed on traditional, shuttle-style looms by artisans who's families have been weaving for generations. Hand-looming is a dying art in Turkey, and part of our core business mission to preserve this incredible tradition while offering our customers incredibly well-made, beautiful textiles they can feel good about buying (and giving!).
Setting up each color on the loom is time and labor intensive. As additional colors are used in a Turkish Towel, the more complex and labor-intensive the weaving process becomes. The material is woven in long lengths, as shown below, with lengths of threads between each pestemal. These rolls of material are then cut and the threads at the end of each pestemal are hand-twisted (or tied, depending on the pestemal style) to create the pestemals' distinctive fringe.
As the artisans were weaving our Spring/Summer 2014 Turkish Towel collection, I asked them to send me a few photos of the weaving process. I was thrilled with these photos they sent of one of the artisans weaving our Blue & Turquoise Bonbon Pestemal. The colors of this collection are some of my favorite yet - I hope you all love them as much as I do!
Stay tuned for the release of the spring & summer collection! We are hoping to have it online the second week of May.
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After spending the last few days in New Orleans I came home with plenty of inspiration. Yesterday as we were walking home from brunch I realized that it would be great fun to plan future Ella Lou collections after cities I have visited and found particularly inspiring. New Orleans home are some of the most beautiful and vibrant homes I have ever come across in the United States. I'm mulling over how to translate the inspiration they provided me into an Ella Lou collection.
Bonjour! I was recently asked by a journalist to provide a few shots of my daughter and I playing with Ella Lou products for an upcoming article (more about that later) and realized I didn't have any. I have hundreds of her playing with my Wanderlust Playmats, wrapped in a pestemal, or hugging pillows. However, because I am typically behind the camera, we didn't have any of us together. We decided to make an afternoon of it and made an appointment at Blink for a quick photo shoot.
On my most recent trip to Paris, I asked my close friend Vanessa, a particularly savvy Parisian, for a list of her favorite Parisian kids stores. Having recently developed our line of Wanderlust Playmats, I am increasingly interested in well-designed children's products and spaces. The Parisian children's stores did not disappoint. Here I share a few of my favorites.
Lindsay Thomasson
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