A little bit about our new collection for 2015

June 19, 2015

Well, summer is here and we're finally getting around to telling you what we've got that's new around here. No excuse for the delay, except maybe the weather, as spring didn't make it to Connecticut until late April.

Nevertheless, or sin embargo, as we say in Español, we did in fact toil away in the salt mines of our magical workshop all winter, so we could bring everyone new and beautiful hippie fashion art. (Excuse the mixed metaphor; the salt mines part is an exaggeration anyway, our facilities in the Mayan Highlands are lovely, and the weather, while quite cool owing to the altitude, is a marked improvement from any New England Winter)

So, you're asking what did we do there? Quite a lot actually. First, due to the success of our garment dyed shorts and pants in 2014, we expanded the garment dyed apparel collection. We got very lucky in sourcing a new basic summer cloth; it's about 4.7 oz., has just a bit of slub (irregular thickness) in the yarn to give it texture and an artesanal look, it dyes richly and softens beautifully, giving it the just the hand you would want from casual summer clothing. The garment dyeing process also shrinks the seams, giving a nice pucker to the cargo pockets and patches (we did patchwork shorts and over-dyed them) and well, we love it and we hope you do. We were so happy with the results we expanded the color selection, and we have gone to unique variant images for our 2015 hand woven apparel; when you see an image of a short or hoodie you like, that's the exact one we'll send you. It's working out great.

We also (I told you we got lucky) sourced a basket weave cotton, it is quite heavy; 8 oz or so, it also dyes and softens just like you'd want it for casual wear with an artesanal look. We are making outerwear; Hoodies and patchwork jackets with it, a heavyweight version of a new kimono that we love, and using it in bags too. When we bolt-dye it, it combines in patchwork with the native textiles that we use with a striking result. You'll see it in a few places in the collection, and we are bringing out more outerwear designs in basket weave for fall.

We are doing our traditional patchwork apparel with embroidered appliques, the Terrapin cargo shorts are a must-see, and we took our "4 Seasons" Tree of Life design and upgraded it. Originally, we wanted to hand-embroider the tree design, it was simply too hard to get right consistently, so we went back to the drawing board and labored to get our 9 color computerized embroidery machines to give us a rustic, hand made looking result, something modern computer software doesn't want to do, but we figured it out. The result was so good, we went overboard and put it on 8 different handbags and backpacks, in different fabrics, and they all look fine.

We are making so many new artesanal styled apparel items, many of which are quite costly to produce, that we left them out of our wholesale collection for 2015, so many products offered on the site this year will not be available in the boutiques that carry our collection. That section is now called the "Ixchel Custom Shop"; it's not open as I write this, we will showcase the new stuff any day now.

We are doing the big jam-band and EDM festivals here in the North East; check our Facebook page for the summer schedule. We won't be at Soldier Field, but our hearts will be, and vendors will have our products. We will reward our steady customers with a BIG discount coupon shorty, also check our Facebook page for news, and that's all of mine for now. Play nice, it's going to be a long summer

Christopher

 

 

 





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