MISCELLANEOUS INSPIRATION

Wow! It’s already been a year since I left Isis (the company I co-founded), launched Poppy Gall Design Studio and started blogging. It has been a very creative and invigorating twelve months! My studio has worked on projects ranging from technical outerwear design and product coloration to knitwear patterns and pajamas.

I’ve made more time in my life for making my own creative mess, including Lacey the Cow – my biggest piece of artwork ever! Smaller scale projects, some in various states of completion, include printmaking, knitting and photography. With endless hours of planning, and with my husband’s patience and labor, I have  finally moved into my new studio. Having a great space is an incredible boost to my creativity.

Thank you to all who have been following my blog, and to those who have held my hand as I tread in cyberspace. It’s sometimes scary putting myself out there, but the process and rewards of blogging are much bigger than the sum of its parts. I’ve met new clients and friends, reconnected with old ones, and been inspired by my reader’s comments and emails.

As I enter into my 2^nd year of blogging with far more ideas to post than I have time, I’d like some feedback from you, dear follower. What about my blog engages you? What topics do you find the most interesting or which do you skip over? Are there subjects you’d like to see more of, or less? Do I post too many pictures or too few? Is the information I share useful to you? Do you forward my blog to others? Are my posts too frequent or too few? How did you find out about my blog? I welcome all constructive criticism.

For all of you who respond to this request, between now and December 15^th, by posting a thoughtful comment on this post, subscribe to my blog via FeedBurner email (see the box on the upper left sidebar on my blog), or  if you “like” my Poppy Gall Design Studio facebook page, I will pool all your names together and pull one from a hat and send the “winner” a little something designed by me as a Thank You!

I’ve been urged to write this blog by those who are curious about where my design and color inspiration springs from and how I look at form and color and then manage to visualize a final piece of art, an article of clothing or a print design.

I’ve been thinking for about how to organize my blog. It has become apparent that if I am to write about what truly inspires me I’ll have to write about what is closest to me, what I encounter day to day and season to season, because this is how my creative mind flows. I can’t predict what I will be writing about in the coming months, though I tend to think that I will be musing about what stimulates my senses when I ski or travel, visit an art gallery or bookstore, plant my garden, window shop or listen to music.

Skiing and being in the mountains fuels my creative spirit (photo courtesy Pennie Rand)

Many of you know me as the co-founder of Isis. I recently left the company after eleven years of intense daily devotion.  It was an incredible experience and I have grown and prospered in ways that I never imagined when I launched it. Because of Isis I have learned a lot about a lot of things that I thought I’d never be interested in, met and worked with wonderful people and traveled to amazing places. I am now embarking on a journey as an independent, full service design studio specializing in apparel, knit and textile design. www.PoppyGall.com. I am excited about a life filled with the richness of new friendships, creative collaboration and the freedom and pleasure to be fully engaged with my work.

For those who don’t know me here is a little bit of my story… I live on a dirt road in Vermont, in a house that I designed myself. It is surrounded by apple trees, perennial and vegetable gardens.

A secluded garden behind my house. My studio is the building beyond the fence.

My husband is an historical restoration carpenter and creates beautiful furniture, windows and doors using antique hand tools. He can turn a block of wood into a functional object of grace and beauty. My studio is on our property. It is a sweet little timber frame barn with great windows that we designed together. He did all the hard stuff like cutting the frame and insulating it. I banged nails, made lunches for him and chose the paint colors.

My studio undergoing construction

We live 15 minutes from groomed Nordic ski tracks and an alpine ski area. I ski almost every day that there is snow on the ground and dream about skiing the rest of the year. My husband and I met at a bicycle race. I was racing and he was the motorcycle escort. I thought his BMW was cool and he thought bike racing was cool. He started racing and now I have two Beemers of my own.

Having fun on the track on a vintage 1976 BMW R60/7 (click on photo)

Since I was a girl I’ve made things with my hands to give as gifts; knit hats and baby sweaters made from yarns I’ve spun or dyed, books stitched and glued together with paper made from mulberry pulp, colorfully painted wooden boxes, greeting cards, fruit jams with illustrated labels, teddy bears sewn from vintage wool coats, clay tiles glazed with folkloric motifs and sparkly Christmas ornaments.

One of my hand painted wooden clocks

The entrepreneurial bug first bit me the summer I was in the 7^th grade. I was earning money to buy a new pair of Rossignol skis. I set up a table at our annual town wide sidewalk sale and sold my own creations; tie-dyed tee shirts, sand candles and pom poms made from gaudy yarns. That fall I had my new skis waxed and ready when the lifts opened.clock

Knitting has played an important part in my life though I’m sure that the babysitter who taught me to knit had no idea where I would go with it. I knit in college lectures to stay awake. I supplemented my income as a ski instructor by knitting custom hats. After a while I realized that I could make a living by marketing my knit designs and having other knitters make them. Mountain Ladies & Ewe, a knit hat and sweater company was born.

Mountain Ladies & Ewe introduced earflap hats to the ski industry

At the time, commercially made ski hats were offered in basic colors with stripes or simple two-color snowflake designs. I introduced the earflap hat to the Ski industry (this was a LONG time ago), infusing them with original multi-colored motifs such as leaping tigers and gypsy dancers and playful tassels.  Pretty soon all the other established hat companies were doing the same. It was fun being a trendsetter and keeping ahead of the game. Ten years later I was itchy to do something new so I sold Mountain Ladies & Ewe to a bigger company and went skiing.

Skiing in pre-Isis clothing 1995

In 1998 I co-founded Isis, the first women-only outdoor clothing brand in the U.S. Isis was born out of personal frustration at not being able to find apparel suited for my outdoor endeavors. When the Isis line was first introduced it made an immediate impact on the male-centric outdoor industry with its bright and feminine colors and non-unisex sizing. Isis changed the attitude of manufacturers and retailers within the industry toward women customers and their needs. It was a hard sell at first but now women specific products are the norm and outdoorswomen have a lot of great choices when looking for gear and apparel.

My first design for Isis was the best selling Niobe Jacket

As Chief Design Officer my role encompassed developing color palettes and designing everything from technical outerwear to seamless body layer and all categories in between. My unique color selections and sense of functional style are important Isis differentiators and are often emulated by other brands. I hope this blog will become a forum for sharing thoughts with others interested in the intersection of color, art, design, fashion, skiing and the world that surrounds us. I look forward to your comments and please pass this along to those who might be interested. For more about me visit  www.PoppyGall.com.