The Bobbin Blogs On

Happy Sustainable New Year 2012

 

Happy Sustainable New Year from The Bobbin!

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Waking up on a new day/new year, I am in awe of the strength and resilence of our communties, families and eco-systems in light of massive global change during 2011. I can only begin to imagine the web of beautiful experiences and awesome life connections that await us all in 2012.

Playful. Empowered. Authentic.

                                           thebobbin.com

 

Radically classic custom clothing & accessories sustainably made in Vermont. The Bobbin's evolving slow fashion designs are well tailored & ethically hand made.

Good Yule & Happy Holidays!

 

God Jul!

Good Yule!

*Happiest of Happy Holidays*

wishing you & yours the wonderous of warm yuletide greetings

may the return of the sun bring joy & creativity to all!

-gyllian

The Bobbin's Year End Newsletter 2011

The Bobbin Slow Fashion + Sustainable Design Year End Newsletter 2011    Happy Hand made Holidays! It has been many moons since I've written a Bobbin Newsletter.  The Bobbin survived "The Great Move" and quietly celebrated another year-in-the-life as a small business in America. The transition from brick & mortar retail store to custom design studio has been quite the rollercoaster ride. After working my way through Planning & Zoning, navigating a name change, website change & re-brand, The Bobbin Slow Fashion & Sustainable Design emerged. As an official Vermont artists studio located in the South End Arts District, The Bobbin is available for custom design and sustainability consultations. I am so honored to be a participant in this year's 15th annual Women's Economic Opportunity Conference. I will be a panelist for the "Arts Go Online" morning workshop. The conference is in its 15th year and is sponsored by Vermont's own U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy. The morning keynote speaker is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. This conference is free and open to the public. Childcare is available for those who pre-register. To learn more: CLICK HERE                                                              Radically classic custom clothing & accessories sustainably made in Vermont. The Bobbin's evolving slow fashion designs are well tailored & ethically hand made.      Playful. Empowered. Authentic.            As we have collectively learned that our food is not grown at the grocery store, it is now time to learn that our clothing is not sewn at the department store. Photo: Gyllian Svensson Bobbin sez... Eat Local! Dress Local! Buy Handmade! Do you know who sews your clothes? A Year in the Life of The Bobbin In January of 2011, I had the pleasure of participating in an episode of "Vermont Edition", our local VPR radio show. 2011 was declared "The Year of Making" through a call in show with Jane Lindholm, focusing on Vermonters growing interest in making things with our hands and a return to more traditional ways of living.   The prediction has certainly rung true for me... This "Year of Making" has brought forth not just one, but TWO Slow Fashion Collections; including dozens of new patterns created for sustainable textiles. I also created a series of Sustainable Sculptures and designed/produced custom jersey tanks for our local roller derby team, The Green Mountain Derby Dames!     The Derby Tanks are "Green Mountain" green with a black racing stripe down each side. The fabric is a super stretch athletic performance material, made right here in the grand ole' U.S.A.! It was a real treat for me to work on a local level and become a corporate sponsor of a fantastic team. The GMDD "Grade A Fancy's" certainly look fancy & fierce in their locally made custom tanks!    美国产品 Made in America     The first slow fashion collection of the year, "Made in America", was an exploration of the dichotomy between fashion & labor in China and America. Vintage velvets, velours & plenty of sweet stripes accent this sustainable line of ECHO tops, Swing Skirts, Art Jackets & fuzzy Vermont Panda hats.   Lake Champlain: After the Flood   The second slow fashion collection is inspired by Lake Champlain : After the Flood. The Collection explores the strength and resilience that help us move through mourning and overcome loss. The Lake Gowns' languid lines are broken by the rigid structure of the tailored pants and vests in motion. These original custom designs were created with all sustainable textiles including vintage silks and wools from the 1930's and 1940's.       Gyllian's Sustainable Sculptures - Art Hop 2011   I was also able to expand my artistic horizons this last year to create a series of sustainable sculptures created from found and recycled objects, including many sticks, stones, barks & branches scavenged from wake of Lake Champlain's Flooding & Hurricane Irene. Living on Lake Champlain will, I'm certain, continue to inspire my designs for decades to come.  The languid lines of the Lake Gown are the apex of the entire collection. A marriage of turquoise cotton & silver silk this gown explores the crossroads of strength crashing against mourning. Tom's of Maine Blog Posts 2011 brought along two opportunities to bring The Bobbin's message of sustainable fashion to Tom's of Maine's eco-friendly fans. In March, I wrote a post explaining the concepts and ideas behind Slow Fashion and its relationship to other "Slow" movements.   Photo: Kristin LaMonde Click this link to read post: What is Slow Fashion? In September, I wrote another post: DIY Let's Make Sustainable Napkins. A step-by-step tutorial (with fun pictures)     Wanna make your own sustainable napkins? CLICK HERE    7 Day's Presents: Strut VI!    This year marked the 6th year of Burlington's very own fashion show STRUT! A popular attraction of SEABA's South End Art Hop, this years show was the biggest and best yet. Sponsored by Seven Days and showcasing twenty designers, this years STRUT! really rocked the runway.     Photo: Eva Sollberger of Seven Days       In honor of 7days Newspaper's "Sweet 16" birthday. I designed this paper skirt. Individual panels are created from folded sheets of newspaper, specifically selected for their color & content. The panels are sewn together and hand-painted.         Buy Hand made & Sustainable this Holiday! EcoOwls, Swing Skirts, Art Jackets, ECHO tops and more! To learn more about The Bobbin, check out our Blog: The Bobbin Blogs On Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on the Facebook join our Fan Page Sustainably Yours, Gyllian Rae Svensson The Bobbin Slow Fashion & Sustainable Design, LLC 802-355-4264 gyllian@thebobbin.com thebobbin.com gyllian.com

Women's Economic Opportunity Conference

 15th Annual Women's Economic Opportunity Conference

Saturday, December 10th 8:30am-3:30am

Vermont Technical College, Randolph Center, VT

I am so honored to be a participant in this year's 15th annual Women's Economic Opportunity Conference. I will be a panelist for the "Arts Go Online" morning workshop The conference is in it's 15th year and is sponsored by Vermont's own U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy. The morning keynote speaker is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. This conference is free and open to the public. Childcare is available for those who pre-register.

To learn more: CLICK HERE

After the Flood: The Collection

 

 

Strut VI

Seven Days Presents: Strut VI  

The Bobbin's Slow Fashion Collection 2012

Lake Champlain: After the Flood

In honor of 7days Newspaper's "Sweet 16" birthday. I designed this paper skirt. Individual panels are created from folded sheets of newspaper, specifically selected for their color & content. The panels are sewn together and hand-painted.

The #BTV Pants, Wave Skirt and NorEaster top utilize Zero-waste design principles throughout the pattern-drafting and manufacturing phases.

A fantastic dress created from vintage hand-dyed jersey paired with the softest of sustainable silks. The "Sticks & Stones" dress was designed with 3/4 inch silk sleeves and a short flirty ruffle.

The Norn Dresses are super soft hand-dyed cotton jersey with a long waist and a polka-dot ruffle. Hand-braided silver & vintage rope close at the shoulders with a bow.

The languid lines of the Lake Gown are the apex of the entire collection. A marriage of turquoise cotton & silver silk this gown explores the crossroads of strength crashing against mourning.

*Photographs by Eva Sollberger of Seven Days

Word of Mouth? In #BTV its the word of tweet

From left, Spencer Taylor, Redmond Deck and Stephen Churchill display various social media accounts held by Handy's Lunch on Maple Street. Owner Earl Handy says social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and Urban Spoon have helped his business expand into an online version of the lunch counter. / ELLIOT deBRUYN, Free Press

Written by: Lynn Monty, Free Press Staff Writer

Printed in Burlington Free Press September 8, 2011

 

Tweets with a hashtag might seem futuristic, but they really equate to the casual street-corner exchanges of yesterday.

In Twitter’s online community, hashtags can also be like local watering holes or office watercoolers, places to visit where valuable information for businesses can be found. Take #BTVLunch, a Twitter stop where people share the best noontime eatery in Burlington.

“Everybody knew my dad through word-of-mouth,” said Earl Handy, third-generation owner of Handy’s Lunch, of his late father Robert Handy. “It took us 45 minutes to get from one street to the next because he would have to stop and talk to everybody. Twenty-five years ago, that was tweeting. He was shaking hands and waving. He was tweeting in person.”

Eighteen months ago, Earl Handy, 36, was just like many business owners, reluctant to get online. He thought Facebook and Twitter were for people who were stalkers. “I wanted nothing to do with it,” he said.

A few tech-savvy friends gave Handy a lesson in social media, and since then,@HandysLunch has sent out almost 5,000 tweets and has more than 1,000 followers and customers frequenting his 65 year-old family business, up 15 percent, he said.

“If you’re in business, you gotta do it,” Handy said. “I have had to be innovative to keep business coming in. Everybody’s on the go and everybody has a smartphone. I’m taking what I learned from my dad and applying it to today. Word of mouth is now the word of tweet.”

Sure, Twitter is the latest form of written currency in the Burlington business community: A Burlington Social Media Usage Survey in July indicated Burlingtonians use Twitter almost as much as they use top social media tool Facebook. But does it make companies money, or is it simply great fun? And how do you measure Twitter success anyhow?

Instead of accumulating friends, Twitter success is usually measured in the number of followers. Twitter is a community of companies and individuals who micro-blog 140 characters at a time. At its best, it’s not about relentless self-promotion but about engaging in many different conversations, experts say.

Carolyn Bonifield is an associate professor at the University of Vermont’s School of Business where social media has become a part of the curriculum. As marketing goes, Twitter is a much less expensive medium than broadcast advertising. Brand messaging can go out one tweet at a time, but social media is not used by businesses solely as a promotional tool, Bonifield said.

“Twitter is used to increase the buzz about brands, but businesses are using Twitter in more of a customer service manner,” she said. “It’s a way to interact with current customers and reach out to potential customers.”

As for companies reluctant to create a Twitter account, Bonifield said the reasons center around the uncertainty on how to proceed and about whether efforts will produce actual results.

“Social media is a positive development and can be used in exciting ways for some brands, but company objectives need to be taken into account,” Bonifield said. “There is not a one-size-fits-all model.”

 

No time to tweet

Family-owned and -operated Willard Street Inn in Burlington does not have a Twitter account and has no plans to open one any time soon. Marketing director Jordan Davis said the medium would work if the inn had a larger capacity.

“Turnaround time on Twitter is quick,” he said. “It’s all about instant gratification. Planning is farther out for a small inn like ours. People tweeting about availability would be disappointed.”

Davis said the inn serves breakfast, and using #BTVBreakfast could bring in more business, but tweeting would take time away from preparation.

“We all work at the inn,” Davis said of his family. “Tweeting would pull us away from the work that has to be done. It really comes down to balancing out time. Social media is not a good fit for us right now. Our time is at a premium.”

Some not only take time to tweet, they have integrated it into their life. Avid tweeter Gyllian Rae Svensson opened a fashion and sustainable design studio called, The Bobbin, four years ago. Today,@TheBobbin has more than 2,000 followers.

“I benefited greatly from knowledgeable bloggers and our very active local Twitter community. Burlington, Vermont, or hashtag #BTV, boasts one of the more engaged and active Twitter communities in the nation,” she said. “It is my go-to news source for local, global and minute-by-minute information. If I want more knowledge about a breaking news story, or want to know our local restaurants daily lunch specials, or even check the weather, my first stop is Twitter.”

 

Gyllian Rae Svensson owns and runs The Bobbin Sew Bar and Craft Lounge from her home studio in Burlington. Svensson prepares her latest line for this week's Art Hop. / EMILY McMANAMY / Free Press

Svensson said, in business, Twitter provides her with a platform to connect with customers on multiple channels. She tweets about upcoming events, shares photos of her latest sustainable fashions and tweets direct links to her website and blog posts.

“For a creative mind, this multi-media platform provides endless opportunities to promote your brand,” Svensson said. “Twitter has allowed The Bobbin, a boot-strapped, mama-owned Vermont artist’s business, to build a brand with a global audience. I am able to connect with professionals in my industry, emerging designers, local artists and fans from all over the world. Folks who have never been to Vermont are able to learn about my business and purchase my product lines, while simultaneously my neighbors can come to my studio and have me design their custom garments.”

Burlington web developer Bradley Holt has been tweeting since 2007.“I was already familiar with social networking, so using Twitter came naturally to me,” he said. “However, I didn’t truly understand how useful it could be until using it at a conference in 2008.”

Three key properties of Twitter

Bradley Holt, a web developer in Burlington, offers these three descriptions and tips about Twitter and how to make it work: 

• Twitter is decentralized and not a broadcast medium. Think about how your tweets are helpful to your followers.

• Twitter is about people pulling information from you, not you pushing information to people. Don’t shove information down people’s throats or they’ll stop following you.

• Twitter is about people and individual connections. Consider having individual organizational members tweet as brand ambassadors.

 

The Zend PHP Conference, or #ZendCon, accumulated 1,500 tweets during the technology conference. Holt said that was when he noticed for the first time how Twitter provided an effective way to learn about what was going on in conference sessions, to hear opinions about sessions he had attended, and to meet new people. Now, every national conference has its own hashtag, he said.

As @BradleyHolt, his Twitter handle, he is often introduced to newtechnologies and became an author of two books through a conversation that started on Twitter.

“Consumers don’t use Twitter, people do,” Holt said.

Innkeepers Tim and Amy Brady are pros at thinking this way. They bought Forty Putney Road Bed and Breakfast in Brattleboro in 2007 and started tweeting regularly in 2009. @InnKeepers has more than 6,000 followers. It was one conversation in particular that gave them an incredible attention boost.

“A big group of our followers stemmed from a story that TechCrunch did about a Twitter exchange that we unknowingly had with their editor,” Tim Brady said.

TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld was in Vermont and sent out a tweet asking for a good place to eat lunch, Brady said. @Innkeepers casually recommended two spots and consequently got mentioned in a Hot Topics blog post on the popular tech site.

“We’re not particularly noisy tweeters,” Brady said. “One or two tweets a day for us is a lot. We post something at least a few times a week and always respond to any queries or correspondence right away. We have booked a few rooms via Twitter and many current and prospective guests connect with us there, so we have certainly realized the value in participating.”

@InnKeepers’ Twitter correspondence has brought in guests from as far away as Holland.

“A few really good followers, that have a bunch of their own followers, will spread your message better than having a large number of unengaged followers yourself,” Brady said.

Follow Lynn Monty on Twitter @TheFullMontyVT

 

 

 

 

Art Hop 2011

September 9-10

Now in its 19th year,  SEABA (South End Arts & Business Association) presents a remarkable exhibition of visual art, paintings, sculptures, fashions and so much more!

Welcome to the season of Art Hop! This is one of my favorite times in my Burlington neighborhood, which has recently been designated the official "Art's District" of Vermont. The year, for the first time, The Bobbin will be an studio site on the Art Hop Map. Don't miss our Open Studio Garden Party with live music on the outdoor stage from Electric Halo noon-2pm.

Saturday, September 10th from noon-4pm

The Bobbin Slow Fashion & Sustainable Design is Site #2 on the Art Hop Map.

My aha moment

 

Sewing with existing fabic. - Gyllian

"My aha moment came during graduate school in sustainable business and communities when I realized the importance of slow fashion and questioning where our clothing comes from and who sews it."

This aha moment is from the Mutual of Omaha traveling airstream trailer, stopping in cities all across America to document our "aha moments -A moment of clarity, the aha moment is a defining moment where you gain real wisdom - wisdom you can use to change your life"  

It was a joy to participate in this collection of stories, I have particuarly loved watching all of the other videos from Burlington, Vermont.

To see more and learn about the "aha moment" CLICK HERE

Governor Shumlin signs The Midwives Bill

As some of you may know, in my "other" life, I am a birth activist, doula, herbalist and proud Mama of 2 homebirthed children. In my twenty years of birth work I have watched the problems with our maternity care system spiral out-of-control.

Recently, however, the tide has changed and my family and I were able to participate in an awesome event. After years of tireless effort from VPIRG, Midwives, social justice activists and families, Vermont's homebirthed children were able to look on while Governor Shumlin signed "The Midwives Bill" into law.

The Midwives Bill requires that all Insurance companies in Vermont must cover the services of midwifery and homebirth, just as our state's Medicaid and Vermont Health Access Plan do. Although I had insurance during my pregancies with both of my children, my family and I had to pay-out-of-pocket for the services of our homebirth midwives. (It was worth every penny!)

For many Mothers, their inability to pay for a homebirth forces them to "choose" a hospital birth, where often they are subject to unecessary interventions. The cost of maternity care in America has skyrocketed, while simultaneously our safety rates have plummeted. The U.S. now ranks 40th in the world for maternal deaths and 46th for infant mortality.

 

According to VPIRG, "Achieving a home birth rate of 15%, would save $13 million a year in health care costs." Currently only 1% of children are born at home in America. Vermont, a rural state with a long tradition of midwives, has one of the highest homebirth rates at 3%. Bringing birth back into the home could save Vermonters millions, as the average cost of a homebirth is 1/3 the cost of a hospital birth.

Homebirth is not just great for the pocketbook, it also provides the best possible beginning for healthy pregnancies to grow and give birth to healthy, happy families. I know that choosing to give birth to my babies at home with midwives was, by far, the best decision I have made in my life.

 

Babies love to be born at home.

What's not to love?