A quick post today, just to share with you some new purchases that have brought a bit of freshness into my home. I love these kantha quilts! Each one is a unique combination of colors and patterns, and they can be used as bedspreads, to cover a couch, wall-hangings, even tablecloths. Kantha is a type of embroidery popular in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, that originated from the way housewives mended old clothes by taking out a strand of thread from the colorful border of their saris and making simple designs with them. Old sari fabric is used to create these hand-stitched quilts, commonly known as nakshi kantha. The decorative running stitch is similar to Japanese sashiko quilting.

I recently bought 5 of them, as I found the various prints and patterns so intoxicating. In truth, I am imagining them as bedspreads for the guestrooms in our someday-to-be-built house in Forestburgh. For now, one is disguising the large flat-screen TV and another will go in the barn, our summer sleeping quarters.

Each one features at least two patterns, but they are often a random mix of various prints and palettes.

The stitching gives them a wonderful handmade quality, and some even have patches where the fabric has been mended. This adds to their charm.

I popped into The Future Perfect on Great Jones Street the other week after having lunch here (divine kale sandwich) and fell in love with this wallpaper, which I am considering for the bedroom, and the work of potter (or "international clay boy and vesselist," as he calls himself) Jered Nelson. I'm sure you can see it's right up my Santa-Cruz-hippie-Sinophile-upstate-'70s-boho-chic alley. I transferred my soy sauce into this gorgeous little jar.

I also got this pitcher from him, and both pieces go rather well with a recent gift from my beloved friend, ceramist Mirena Kim. I'm keeping brown rice vinegar in her lovely aqua jar, a sweet spot of color in my earthy kitchen.