• about sara jane •

As a lifelong admirer of flea markets, vintage clothing and bright, intuitive shapes and patterns, I stumbled upon a small booklet of felt squares from a company that made Girl Scout uniforms in the 1950s. These tiny squares evoked something similar that I had been striving for in my paintings of the previous few decades. After spending my college years earning a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art and then continuing on through graduate school, I strove to combine the diverse textures of quiltmaking with the simple, playful geometric shapes that came out of my drawings. After creating a strong body of work, I felt the need to do something that was less isolating and turned to costume design. Just as with my painting, I strive to take the characters of film and television and place them in their natural atmosphere through their clothing.

A few years ago, I found the beautiful Girl Scout felt colors tucked away and all of a sudden I realized that this would be the beginning of a whimsical and playful relationship where I could make belts, flowers, purses and slippers that could feel homemade, would evoke the past and would be fun and pretty to wear. The felt baby slippers are called "Cubbies" and were truly conceived after looking at my dog's face and thinking how cute it would be to have a dog on one slipper and a set of bones on the other. The other motifs sprang out of a love for all animals and the desire to put something happy on a little baby's foot so that they could look at it. The line continues to grow as I discover different ways to express the joy and whimsy of felt.