HappnStance

Other than my original Fabric Confetti line, I also had another line called HappNstance.

There is a lovely story behind this.

In addition to the more whimsical designs, I wanted to create something a little more personal. I knew my husband’s grandfather had a factory in Berlin during the 1920s and 30s that stamped linens with hand embroidery designs. My husband’s family was Jewish and the factory was taken over in 1935 by the Nazi authorities. My husband’s family fled to Holland and put everything in storage because they had to move inland to hide.  Just before the war ended, one of the neighbors ratted out the man hiding the family and the Nazis swooped in to take them away. My mother–in-law was the only survivor. After the war she went back to the storage unit and found that it had not been vandalized.

When the Jewish Museum was opened in Berlin in 2001, my husband’s family donated everything that they had left from the factory to the museum. When I asked my husband about it, he said he would contact the people at the museum and ask them to make photocopies of a 1932 catalog from the company.  The people at the museum were wonderful and took digital pictures of every page in the catalog and sent them to us on a CD.

I called this line of patterns HappNstance because “Happ” comes from my husband’s mother’s maiden name, and “stance” from the matter of circumstances that led me to question my husband about the catalogue. I  adapted some of the designs from the catalog for the applique flowers in following designs: Marianne, Potpourri, Rosalita, and others.