On the heels of MAKESHIFT 2013, we are inspired and invigorated by the conversations around design, fashion, food, craft, and DIY that took place last week during New York Design Week. We hope that you have followed our explorations throughout the events this year and have used our discussions to begin conversations of your own. We are even more convinced about the importance of making, sharing, and finding common ground, and look forward to expanding the conversations about design, fashion, food, craft, and DIY over the coming months.

One thing that resonates from those talks last week, are the concepts of collaboration and skill sharing.  As we continue to open source our ideas, our Alabama Chanin workshops will continue to grow. These events—like MAKESHIFT—have become an intimate, extraordinary way for us to connect with fellow makers, designers, and like-minded creators across the country (and the world).

The idea for these one-on-one workshops originally came from my editor, Melanie. And when she first explained what she meant, I couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to come and spend time in our studio.  (This wasn’t the first time she proved me wrong.) Today, this idea has become an important part of who we are as a company and our growing business model.

Most companies don’t have the ability or the location that allows for hands-on studio work. The Factory, our studio since 2007, was originally built as a as a sewing factory in 1982, and has proven an ideal place for designers, makers, sewers, and potential business owners to gather.

The types of workshops we offer in our studio have grown and expanded over the last five years, from a One-Day Workshop, to a Studio Weekend, to an Individual Studio Day. And this may sound trite, but no matter the group, the environment, or the length of time spent, we have walked away from each workshop having learned something – about others’ sewing techniques, family histories, personal connections to craft, even some off-color jokes that we won’t admit to telling. There is always an incredible sense of sharing, of collaboration, and of community. We teach; we learn.

We are in the process of expanding our space here at The Factory, designing an event center that will provide the space for community events, communal dinners, and, most importantly, a studio space for total immersion into design, craft, making, and expanding ideas. After a few requests from workshop attendees, and upon spending a week this past summer at Shakerag Workshops, followed by two weeks at Penland School of Crafts, we decided to expand our collection of workshops to include a week-long studio experience.

These Studio Weeks are planned for twice a year, starting with November 11– 16, 2013, and again next spring, May 26-31, 2014.

The class will explore different types of fabric manipulation with 100% cotton jersey, including how various stitching, stenciling, and color application techniques can transform and personalize a garment or a piece of work. Students will learn to hand sew and create contemporary embellishments using classic techniques like appliqué, couching, and various types of thread work. The class will explore color, layout, and inspiration for fabric design and project creation. Students will complete sample blocks using some of our demonstrated techniques that they can use for reference or can piece together to create scarves, pillows, or other items, all with an eye toward developing and preparing a garment project by the end of the week.

See our Studio Week PDF for more detailed information about what to bring, what to wear, and a full list of our favorite restaurants, pubs, and hiking trails.

The cost for the week is $3,000 and includes 6 yards of 100% organic cotton jersey in the color of choice (enough for one or more garments), a thread and embroidery floss sampler, access to airbrush and paint, a selection of garment patterns and stencils available in our Alabama Studio book series, instruction, daily breakfast and weekday lunches, non-alcoholic beverages, studio access daily from 8:00 am – 6:30 pm and a few surprises along the way. (Additional Alabama Chanin fabric and supplies can be purchased at a discount.)

If you are interested in learning more about the Studio Week, please contact: workshops (at) alabamachanin.com or call Olivia at +1.256.760.1090 M-F from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm CST.

Register here.

On Sunday, as part of MAKESHIFT 2013, we co-hosted a Chair Workshop, modeled after the MAKESHIFT 2012 workshop, Crafting Design, sponsored by Partners and Spade. This year we teamed up with Build It Green!NYC (BIG!NYC) and Krrb and invited an array of makers to join us for an afternoon of collaboration, innovation, and chair re-design. While our event at The Standard focused on conversation (though there was plenty of making going on as well), the chair event has evolved into a make-centered occasion where a community of designers work both independently and together through skill sharing and mutual encouragement.

The event was held at BIG!NYC’s restore facility in Brooklyn – a warehouse filled with doors, fireplace mantels, sinks, mirrors, tiles and a number of other goods, much of it vintage and antique, acquired through donations and offered at low prices for those looking to save money (and the landfill) in home renovations. Or in the case of friend Kerry Diamond (of Cherry Bombe Magazine) and her chef/partner Robert Newton, the interior of their third and most recent restaurant, Nightingale 9, was designed with salvage bought from BIG!NYC.

All chairs were donated to BIG!NYC and given to participants, who repaired them, embellished them, or in some cases, completely repurposed them by combining aspects from more than one chair into a singular new creation. The energy was high and creativity sparked.

Various supplies from the Alabama Chanin studio included 100% organic cotton jersey scraps and pulls, thread and needles, stencils, and tools. Build it Green! provided essential tools like hammers, nails, screws, drills, staple guns, heavy duty adhesive, paint, brushes, and even a hair dryer.

Amy Devers from “Fix This Yard” on A&E joined us to help guide designers in the nitty-gritty of furniture re-doing, along with Andrew Wagner of Krrb. Kristen Wintercheck of Wintercheck Factory came and made an awesome love-seat/bench from three chairs.

As our guests finished up their chairs, a DJ played, Brooklyn Brewery ales were imbibed, and local fare was devoured.

Most of our makers left their chairs with BIG!NYC to be auctioned off with 100% of proceeds going to help support the restore facility and staff in their efforts to keep landfills clear of reusable debris. Natalie and the Alabama Chanin team also worked on a chair – a bench actually – with the help of Amy Devers and friends Gael Towey and Kay Gardiner, which will be auctioned off as well.

A huge thanks to our co-sponsors, Build It Green!NYC and Krrb, and to all the designers who braved the drab weather to join us for this great event.

“Craft” might seem like it’s for the amateurs, and “fashion” for the auteurs. Yet we live in an age where creativity and innovation are increasingly found in collaborations between makers and users, crafters and designers, designers and manufacturers, and in the loosening of the boundaries between them. – MAKESHIFT 2012

The MAKESHIFT conversation began last year to discover where and how various creative industries can work together as one. The discussion continued last Thursday evening at The Standard, addressing the intersection of industries on the artisan level, where the interchanges occur, and how we can transform those intersections through innovation and collaboration for the greater good.

Several designers, filmmakers, authors, musicians, and makers joined us, alongside friends and panelists, Cathy Bailey of Heath Ceramics, singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash, Andrew Wagner of Krrb, Kristen Wentrcek of Wintercheck Factory, Natalie Jordi of People’s Pops, and singer/songwriter Tift Merritt. While we shared ideas, touching on subjects like the importance of maintaining authenticity when scaling a small business, we crafted our thoughts and experiences surrounding these issues onto 100% organic cotton Alabama Chanin totes. The results are beautiful, provocative, and insightful.

Collaboration and innovation begin with conversation, and we were able to capture some of the night’s most poignant thoughts, shared below.

“I love to do something that eliminates words and music, so that when I go back to music, it feels fresh.” – Rosanne Cash on creativity

“I’m someone who makes sense of my life by making things.” – Tift Merritt on creativity

“Handmade objects are all about things that retain a story…it’s all about the story.” – Father Andrew

“We’ve moved closer into the heart of things, making closer to where people are, not away from people, on a scale that feels like the craft and balance are still there.” – Cathy Bailey on scaling Heath Ceramics and their new factory in San Francisco

“The making is integral.” – Cathy Bailey

“You make things because something is imbedded in you, something that you miss. Why do people make? Do you need to make, or want to make?” – Jill Andresevic on creativity

“As long as you don’t sacrifice on [quality] ingredients then there aren’t that many factors negatively affected by machine.” – Natalie Jordi on scaling manufacturing

P.S.: Thank you to Cole Haan for providing the beautiful leather for crafting on our totes.

As this posts to our Journal this morning, part of our Alabama Chanin team will be in the air and on their way home from MAKESHIFT 2013. We hope that you have followed our explorations and conversations during New York Design Week via Instagram and have had conversations of your own.  Leaving MAKESHIFT this year, we are even more convinced about the importance of making, sharing, and finding common ground. You can expect a full recap of our experiences from New York Design Week in the next days, plus expanding conversations about design, fashion, food, craft, and DIY over the coming months.

One thing we do know is that, as we continue to open source our ideas, our Alabama Chanin conversations series and workshops will continue to grow.  These events—like MAKESHIFT—have become an intimate, extraordinary way for us to connect with fellow makers, designers, and like-minded creators across the country (and the world). See more in the coming weeks about the bag project we started at MAKESHIFT 2013.  In the meantime, here are some instructions for a different kind of bag (with an equally important message).

In the early spring of this year, Alabama Chanin designed and created a one-of-a-kind bag to support the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s “You Can’t Fake Fashion” campaign. We loved the finished product so much that I wanted my own version, adapting the OrganicTote Bag #3. This bag measures 17 1/2” x 13 3/4” x 4 3/4” and is large enough to use as a purse or laptop bag or to carry your sewing projects. The tote has been double-layer appliquéd all-over using our Paisley stencil in Alabama Indigo fabric.

The bag comes in Natural. We chose to customize this tote to match our CFDA bag by dyeing it indigo, but your design choices are endless.

If you want to try your hand at indigo dyeing your tote, you can see how some of our friends created their own indigo dye bath. If you want to experiment with other colors, it is easy to find recipes for natural dyeing online. Wherever you live, there is a fruit, vegetable, plant, or flower in season that can be used to create beautiful shades. The Tote Bag is also beautiful in its original Natural color, which allows you freedom to display high contrast appliqués or go for a tone-on-tone color palette.

SUPPLIES

Tote Bag #3
Paisley Stencil from our Resource Downloads page.
Natural Dye Indigo Fabric
Cotton Jersey Pulls or Kitchen Twine  for the handles
Button Craft thread
Embroidery Scissors
Sewing needles
Pins

Stencil or trace the Paisley pattern onto the back of appliqué fabric using your stenciling method of choice. For each appliqué that you want to place on the Tote Bag, you will also cut a slightly larger version of that piece by cutting about 1/8” around the outside of an identically stenciled piece. This will allow you to stitch a double-layered appliqué.
Begin by placing your larger appliquéd pieces on each side of the Tote Bag and securing them into place with pins. Once you have your appliqué placed as desired, add the slightly smaller appliqué pieces on top of those first appliqués by removing the pins one piece at a time and re-pinning through the smaller and larger appliqué at one time, fitting the smaller appliqué just inside the borders of each larger appliqué.

Using a whip stitch, secure the smaller appliqué through all layers of the larger appliqué and the bag. This leaves about 1/8” of the larger appliqué visible behind your smaller appliqué.

We covered the handles of our bag with Cotton Jersey Pulls. You can also use Kitchen Twine, but keep in mind that you will need more yardage as they are thinner and will cover less surface area. Securely tack the end of the pull to the inside of the tote bag’s handle, then begin wrapping by making a loop and pulling the end of your cotton jersey pull through the loop to make a knot. Continue making knots to completely cover the straps of the bag. When you reach the end of a pull, tie to the next pull using a square knot and continue wrapping. Once you have wrapped the entire handle, secure the end of the pull to the inside of the tote by tacking the end of the pull to the inside of the tote bag’s handle.

Last night we kicked off our Makeshift 2013 conversations with an intimate dinner hosted by friends Lisa Fox and Rosanne Cash.

It was wonderful to hear all of the conversations running through the night, from the study of 50 pages of Proust, to the intellectual property rights on patterns.

Come back tomorrow for more New York Design Week, our conversation at The Standard, East Village, and make your plans for Sunday at Build It Green!NYC in Brooklyn.

Use #makeshift2013 to join the conversation.

Make v. Tr. 

To cause to exist or happen; bring about; create.
To bring into existence by shaping, modifying, or putting together material; construct.
To compel.
To form in the mind.
To compose.
To prepare; fix.
To engage in.
To carry out; perform.
To achieve, produce, or attain.
To institute or establish; enact.
To draw up and execute in a suitable form.
To assure the success of.
To develop into.
To draw a conclusion as to the significance or nature of.
To cause to be especially enjoyable or rewarding.
To appear to begin (an action).
(Among others…)

Shiftv. Tr. 

To alter (position or place).
To change (gears), as in an automobile.
To exchange (one thing) for another. 

During New York Design Week, Heath Ceramics is celebrating their 10th anniversary at The Future Perfect, one of our favorite design stores. Friends Cathy Bailey, Robin Petravic, and Adam Silverman chose to celebrate with The Future Perfect for their like-minded dedication to good design, community, and collaboration. The display features ten Heath Ceramics designs, including an Alabama Chanin collaboration, a limited edition New York bowl (also for sale at The Future Perfect), and a wall of post cards representing 10 moments in 10 years that you can take with you.

We are super proud for our Heath collaboration to be represented in the exhibition. Drop by The Future Perfect from 10am to 7pm daily; 11am to 7pm Sunday, at 55 Great Jones Street (between Bowery & Lafayette) through Monday, May 20th.

More on  MAKESHIFT 2013 coming soon…

Cows were born to roam and graze. Hogs were born to root and wallow. Chickens were born to scratch and peck. According to Will Harris and White Oak Pastures, these are the natural behaviors of animals, making them commonsense tenets of how to raise healthy livestock. “Nature abhors a monoculture,” is one of Will’s favorite sayings.

Five generations of Harrises have farmed a tract of land in Georgia that now raises livestock using traditional, multi-species grazing rotation, no hormones and no antibiotics. But, business was not always done this way. Post WWII, the Harris family farm moved away from the traditional ways of doing things and began raising livestock using more chemicals and fertilizers and blending into the industrialized complex of food production. In the mid-90’s, Will Harris, the current head of White Oak Pastures, made what some called a foolish decision to bring the family farm full circle: moving back to the traditional ways of natural grazing, healthy animals, and respectful butchering.

Harris is the first to admit that making that change wasn’t easy or cheap. In Joe York’s documentary, Cud, produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance, he said, “I was a very conventional cattleman for many years. I went to the University of Georgia and majored in Animal Science and I learned industrial beef production and came home and did it. I used hormone implants on my cattle, fed…antibiotics, confinement-fed a high carbohydrate or corn and soy diet, and used all of the other tools that science had given us to make beef production cheap, and quick, and efficient. But, as I approached middle age, the excesses of that production system came to bother me more and more.”

Ultimately, Harris decided to transition into a grass fed, pasture-grazing style of farming. They stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, something Will Harris admits was difficult. “I’ve never used cocaine,” he said, “but using particular nitrogen-based fertilizers, I believe, is like cocaine for farmers.”

Maggie and I visited White Oak Pastures on the way back from Florida last month and toured the farm with Will. As we rode around the 2,500 acre farm in his pick-up truck, Will called these early years “dark days.” The commitment, the change, and learning new ways nearly cost him the family farm. “Dark days,” he said again. “Can you imagine?”

The farm has expanded from what was once a monoculture of cattle to include sheep and poultry (guarded by 12 beautiful Great Pyrenees dogs) that roam freely and breed naturally. This is certainly not the cheapest or easiest way to raise livestock, but the Harrises and the entire staff they call “cowboys” at White Oak Pastures have adopted it as a lifestyle and have even dedicated themselves to seeing their animals through every stage of their life. They have built on-site abattoirs to ensure a dignified end to their days. Their plant was designed by Temple Grandin famed doctor of animal science, and is intended to allow the animals a humane passing.  Dark days behind him, Will says to me, “I’m happy every day. I love this life.”

Our visit only reinforced for me the connection between the slow food and the slow fashion movements. We at Alabama Chanin make every effort to be a zero waste company, using only necessary materials, reusing everything we can, and throwing very little away. The Harrises take this zero waste approach to everything they do at the farm. Their animal remains are processed in an on-site digester and used as organic fertilizer for their pastures. They are learning to tan hides to increase useable output from their well-loved animals.

More than that, almost half of the farm’s energy is derived from solar panels. They have a small organic farm that grows heritage fruits and vegetables, which the employees are encouraged to take home to share with their families. Like us, the Harrises believe that their skilled workers are artisans. White Oak Pastures employees work on non-mechanized lines rather than rushed and more dangerous assembly lines. When we visited, we ate the “cowboy” lunch that the farm serves every day: organic, farm-raised food for just $1. The pavilion where they eat during the week becomes a farm-to-table restaurant on the weekends. There are plans to build cabins or a bed and breakfast on the property so that others who want to learn more about farming organically and ethically can attend workshops on just about everything White Oak Pastures does – animal welfare, land and food management, growing, and canning.

Will Harris is a fourth generation cattle farmer and offers what he calls “Southern Cowboy Common Sense” on how to recognize if animals are being well treated: “If you would like to open up a lawn chair and drink a couple of glasses of wine while you watch the animal, then you have good animal welfare.”

Transparency is the key to ethical production, no matter what industry you are in. Fast fashion and fast food are both unhealthy lifestyle models that harm individuals and environments. White Oak Pastures is setting an example for a league of industries to follow. Ours included…

P.S.: I loved the film about Temple Grandin’s life. There is so much to read about her amazing life and work.

In 1982, Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The deli quickly became Ann Arbor’s premiere specialty foods store.  As the business grew to include mail order customers across the country, Paul and Ari were presented with an opportunity to open stores nationwide and follow a traditional franchise business model. What they did instead is a great representation of the philosophies that Alabama Chanin tries to embody. Community, sustainability, and education are at the heart of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, which is made up of eight different, semi-autonomous businesses that operate as one organization. Zingerman’s has remained firmly in Ann Arbor, building successful commerce from within the community, by the community, for the community. This year the organization will have annual sales of about $46,000,000 and employs nearly 600 people.

The Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (aka, the ZCoB) includes a bakery, a coffee roaster, a creamery that makes both fresh cheese and gelato, a candy manufactory, and a James Beard award-winning restaurant. ZingTrain, Zingerman’s business training service, offers seminars that share the organization’s approach to leadership, service, open book management, visioning, etc. They offer baking classes at BAKE, their nationally recognized baking school for the home baker. Zingerman’s also runs a publishing house, which publishes several books by Ari, focused on guiding the small business owner. You can find the titles Building a Great Business and Being a Better Leader in our online store. In the spirit of Alabama Chanin, the books were beautifully designed and illustrated by the Zingerman’s team, printed in Ann Arbor on recycled paper and are not available through mass market distribution.

We sat down with Ari Weinzweig to find out more about this unusual and innovative prototype for a new kind of business model.

AC: Ari, what was the impetus for taking such an unusual route to growing your business? Did it feel like a tremendous risk to go against the grain?

AW: The vision for the community of businesses came out of a year-long dialogue between me and Paul.  It started in the summer of ’93, about a decade after we opened Zingerman’s Deli, when we’d essentially fulfilled our original vision. One morning, Paul sat me down out front of the deli and asked me what I wanted us to be doing ten years down the road. I had no clue, nor much of an interest in working on the answer. But he pushed me on it and we ended up spending a year planning a vision of the future that we were excited about. Our original vision for the deli was clear in that we only wanted one of them—we like unique things (like the clothing at Alabama Chanin) and so we knew we didn’t want to make copies of what we had started. But we did want to keep growing. And that led us over the course of that year to write the vision for Zingerman’s 2009—it outlined the idea of having a community of businesses, all Zingerman’s businesses, but each with its own unique specialty.  All would be located in the Ann Arbor area. Each would have a managing partner (or partners) that owned part of that business and ran it day to day. And we would operate as one coherent Zingerman’s organization made up of these semi-autonomous pieces.

Was it hard to go our own way? Not really that hard, I don’t think. We’ve always gone our own way. I’ve always been averse to doing what everyone else is doing. It was harder to decide what we were going to do. We knew we didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. We were much more driven to do something special, that we felt good about, than we were to make money. But there weren’t really any models out there for us to look at. So we ended up creating our own. Fortunately, it worked out pretty well.

AC: I’ve heard many people advise against taking on a business partner because you risk compromising your vision, but you’ve built an extensive business based on collaboration. How do you manage working with so many different individuals without losing your overall vision?

AW: For us it starts with the vision. Because we don’t become partners until after we’ve agreed on a vision, it reduces the odds of that happening. The way that we define our vision (described in Part 1 of the Guide to Good Leading, Building a Great Business) results in a collaboratively created, highly detailed, emotionally engaging picture of the future that we want to go after. And because it’s in writing, and we’re likely to have worked on it together for a year or more before we open, it significantly increases the odds of the partnerships working.

It’s certainly not the only way to work. But it works for us. We like having a lot of smart people driving for greatness together. I wrote an essay on the Natural Laws of Business (in Building a Great Business) and #9 is that success means you get better problems. We far prefer the problem of having too many people going after greatness and the challenges that brings, than the one of having to do everything ourselves.

AC: I’m headed to Ann Arbor this summer for Camp Bacon, where I’ll lead an Alabama Chanin workshop and take part in what is essentially a bacon festival (and fundraiser for Southern Foodways Alliance). How did the idea for Camp Bacon come about?

AW: Well, I also wrote a book on bacon—Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon. In the book I sort of made up the idea of this great camp that we could all wish we’d gone to. About eight months after the book came out we were in a meeting, talking about the book, and Pete Garner, our marketing manager, laughingly said, “We should actually have Camp Bacon.” One thing I’ve learned over the years is that those off the cuff, not really serious comments are often great, creative ideas. So I said, “You know, you’re right, let’s do it!” And we did. This will be our 4^th annual. We do it is a fundraiser for Southern Foodways Alliance and for the 4H Clubs. We have a great lineup—four or five bacon makers, a couple of bacon poets, and of course you—leading a session on sewing bacon and bacon sewing. Oh yeah, plus all the bacon you can eat! Or in your case, sew!

Find more details about Bacon camp here.

AC: After Camp Bacon, I’m planning to stay over and attend the ZingTrain seminar “Creating a Vision of Greatness,” which promises to help small business owners from a variety of industries grow their businesses to greatness over bigness and achieve their respective visions. There’s a tremendous generosity in sharing what you’ve learned through running Zingerman’s. Why share?

AW: Why not? For openers, the obvious answer is that’s what ZingTrain does—share the Zingerman’s Experience and approach to business through training. Also because people asked—we’re regularly asked about “the secrets” of what we do. The business books and the seminars are those “secrets” (which of course aren’t really secrets, anyways!). On a more intellectual or philosophical level? We believe in what we’re doing. We believe that when we share it, good things happen in the world. And we believe that all involved—all of us who are sharing and you to whom we’re teaching—will benefit.

AC: In your Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 1, Building a Great Business, you write that your intimate study of anarchism lends heavily to the Zingerman’s business model. Can you tell us a little bit about how being a “lapsed anarchist” has affected the Zingerman’s organization?

AW: When I started studying history at the University of Michigan in the late 1970s, my distrust of authority, along with my fascination with obscure thinkers, drove me to spend a fair bit of time in a section of the university’s graduate library known as the Labadie Collection. Barely remembered today, Jo Labadie (pronounced, Lah-BAH-die), a Detroiter known during his lifetime as “the gentle anarchist,” donated his entire collection of political pamphlets—primarily pieces by anarchists like himself—to the U of M in 1911, creating the core of a now world-renowned collection of publications related to radical politics.

To this day, many people confuse the terms “anarchy” and “anarchism.” While the two sound similar, they aren’t the same thing. The former refers to a state of leaderless bedlam; the latter is a philosophy based on respect for the individual and freedom from the restrictions of government or external authority. Early 20th-century anarchist Alexander (Sasha) Berkman said: “I must tell you, first of all, what Anarchism is not. It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos. It is not robbery and murder. It is not a war of each against all. It is not a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.”

Anyways, about three years ago as I was working on Part 1 of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading,  Building a Great Business I started rereading a lot of the old anarchist’s books as preparation for a talk I was giving at the Jewish Studies department at the university here. I was shocked by the amazing parallels between a lot of what they were writing about and the way we were trying to run our business. Respect for every individual, free choice, doing the right thing for the community, the importance of doing work you believe in, the belief that every individual has something to contribute, the thought that hierarchy his rarely helpful…reading it in the context of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, I was struck by the parallels. It’s pretty powerful.

Here’s one example: in her 1910 essay, “Anarchism,” Emma Goldman wrote that anarchism “is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual… [which is] only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist—the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force.” Again, replace the words “anarchism” and “society” with “Zingerman’s” or “our organization” and her words pretty much sum up the kind of work experience we’re trying to provide here!

Two weekends ago, we participated in the inaugural Southern Makers event in Montgomery, Alabama. The one-day affair, curated and created over the last year by Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood, Matter, and E.A.T. South, celebrated Alabama-based makers and designers who focus on producing and transforming modern sustainable products derived from local traditions in architecture, food, fashion, and design. The afternoon included workshops, panel discussions, a maker bazaar, chef tasting booths, live bands, and a wealth of conversations that grew over coffee, delicious food, and locally brewed beer.

The Union Station Train Shed on the Alabama River offered the perfect venue for the 90+ artisans, artists, chefs, musicians, designers, and makers who convened for the day. The set, designed by Bell + Bragg and Southern Accents Architectural Antiques, had a distinctly Southern aesthetic, and was organized by region: Points North; Points Central; Points South. We shared a section of the train shed with friends Butch Anthony, Billy Reid, and artist Audwin McGee. Live bands, including Florence natives, The Pollies, occupied the stage that anchored the north end of the depot, set before the backdrop of windows, a wall of doors, and a constantly occupied swing that hung from the enormous roof.

Chefs David Bancroft of Acre, Wesley True of True (both part of the Front Porch Revival, who spoiled us with an impressive menu last month during Barnstorm 2013), and Jim N’ Nick’s BBQ (who took good care of us last fall at our cotton picking party) provided tastes for Southern Makers attendees. Cheese maker Tasia Malakasis demonstrated how to make goat cheese from her Belle Chevre booth. We met the ladies behind Mama Mocha’s Coffee Emporium, an in-house roaster in Auburn, Alabama, where they brew each cup to order (the Whiskey Caramel Latte with an Evan Williams-brown sugar reduction was a favorite). We also met the guys behind Plenty Design Co-op, a Birmingham, Alabama design firm focused on modern, minimalist design principles (more on their beautiful pieces to come…).

It was a full day, beginning with a Two-Hour Sewing Workshop that overlapped an all-day busy booth, and concluded with a successful panel discussion on which Natalie spoke alongside makers Gina Locklear of Zkano socks, Eating Alabama filmmaker Andy Grace, Carol Griffin of Birmingham’s Continental Bakery (maker of our favorite wild yeast bread), Chris Blankenship of Alabama Gulf Seafood, and Carter McGuyer from Carter McGuyer Design, a Tuscumbia-based design firm, on the topic of renewing traditional, local industries to resonate in a modern world. The panel discussion was one of several conversations under the theme “Alabama: Past, Present, Future,” that addressed sustainability and preservation of materials and traditional practices across creative disciplines in Alabama.

The event was a great beginning to understanding the wealth that our own state-wide communities and makers possess, and an excellent event model for other states and communities to follow. This week we kick off MAKESHIFT 2013, on occasion of New York Design Week, where we look forward to hosting (and co-hosting) several conversations and events around the intersection and collaboration of industries like design, fashion, food, music, craft, and DIY. We will carry what we’ve learned and discovered about our own Alabama makers into our MAKESHIFT conversations, where we strive to expand our growing regional discussions into a global exchange.

The Dust-to-Digital book and CD compilation Never a Pal Like Mother is a collection of vintage photographs of and commercial recordings about mother. It’s an unusual and unique gift for any book lover. Just one of several Dust-to-Digital publications we sell in our online store, it may be our favorite.

Our post on Mom and the Casserole  explored the history of the American casserole, a memory most of us share and strongly associate with Mom.

We dug deeper into The Craft of Midwifery, possibly the oldest DIY pursuit known to (wo)mankind, and the growing interest in home births.

Mark Twain’s Advice to Little Girls added some much needed humor to our routine.

We look forward to Sunday and sharing a few moments (not just a card) with our mothers (and those who have mothered us) and perhaps a few moments mothering ourselves.

We wish you all a HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY—whatever that means for you…
xo from all of us @ Alabama Chanin