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Sewing, knitting, embroidery, easy and fashion blog

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After summarizing for you the A&A patrons history in this article. We thought it was interesting to tell you more about our small team today and our daily work.

If you followed the previous article, you already know a little about our team because it is simple, we are three and moreover from the same family! :

Nadine, the founder of A&A Patrons, Yannick the webmaster and Nadine's husband who joined her in the adventure few years ago and Amandine, the new recruit, originally founder of the Aléfil boutique in Paris and incidentally daughter of Nadine and Yannick.

To help you to understand who is doing what, we propose you with this diagram:

Introducing the A&A patrons team

As you can see, we have two key and compatible activities in our company:

- The design office fashion and pattern making for clothing industry

- The Online Haberdashery with all the management (inventory, supplier orders) and communication that this implies.

Not to mention the A&A Patrons side and historic activity:

- training. Because, for 17 years, Nadine was trainer in styling and pattern making and Amandine continues today her knitting, crochet and sewing workshops in Nantes.

All that to explain you our complementary skills, our knowledge and our activities illustrated in the following diagram:

A&A patrons diagram complementary activities

> The fashion design-pattern making allows us to know all the assembly techniques and allows us to look for the particular notions and sometimes techniques that we can then offer to our clients within the online haberdashery (eg for sleeve head strip, the Japanese rule, fusible interlining, horsehair band, etc.).

Our pattern making activity also helps us being familiar with products from our haberdashery: fabrics, buttons, ties, wool, threads, technical tools, because we use them daily!

> Conversely, all our knowledge in haberdashery, fabrics and suppliers allows us to offer our design office customers, the appropriate elements to carry out their clothes collection through our sourcing capacities.

> Our training expertise, allows us to bring advices to you, online haberdashery customers. In order to provide clear and precise description to each product posted.

 

We now invite you to enter our premises, discover the mix of our business design office and haberdashery! Here to see all images.

Fashion design office Nantes - France

A&A patterns printing

On our great desks we draw the papers patterns. After many validation steps (canvas, prototype, etc), the pattern will be printed on this great special printer, or sent directly as a file to the clothing factory.

By the meter fabrics A&A Patrons

Discover all our fabrics ranges, cotton, silk, organic fabrics, etc.

Sewing threads A&A Patrons

The sewing threads are presented in old jam jars, to more quickly find the colors!

Haberdashery buttons A&A Patrons

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Through this blog, we talk mostly of our products, our discoveries and tutorials that have been developed, but we do not talk much about us, the one that founded the company A&A Patrons up people who now develops it and the various activities that have been developed over time.

Indeed, we see regularly, talking to those who move at our offices in Nantes, they are amazed at our many activities and they would like to learn more!

That's why we wanted to tell you our history at first, and then the details of our activities through a second blog post coming soon,

1/ The A&A Patrons history

We truly immersed in our archives to tell you all about it!

The company was founded in 1989 in Nantes, by the will of Nadine, trained in fashion design professorship, to create her children sewing patterns brand.
A few years later, Nadine noted, making animations for sewing in Paris Tissus Reine (a famous fabric store near Montmartre), a need for people to get personal couture training. She decided to offer household sewing workshops and a new service custom tailored patterns. Meanwhile, Nadine answers many requests for patterns for making and thus develops her own fashion design office for ready-to-wear.

A&A first patterns

Then in 1994, A&A Patrons needs to expand and Nadine opened her first premises in Nantes. In addition to ongoing activities, such as creating "wallet" patterns for children and sewing workshops, Nadine launched herself into the fashion design professional training.

former haberdashery A et A Patrons in Nantes

Then, in response to a growing demand of her students of a need for technical haberdashery (colors choice, technical advice ...). Nadine changes her premises in1997 to open her haberdashery in Nantes historical center while developing her Vocational Training Centre: The haberdashery on the ground floor, the training center on the second floor always coupled with the fashion design office.

With the increasing development of the Web, and thanks to Yannick computer skills, her husband. A&A Patrons decides to go in 2000 in the online business by opening one of the first online haberdashery.

In 2008, Nadine, to better manage her business, decides to refocus her structure on the online haberdashery and fashion design office and so stops her vocational training activity and the physical haberdashery (the store located in Nantes).

A&A Patrons website before after

The online haberdashery gradually takes the scale and passing the years, the technology of the first website becomes obsolete. In 2012, Yannick completely recasts the online haberdashery to become the site you see today (which is still evolving every day!).

Aléfil workshop in Paris

The same year, Amandine, the Nadine and Yannick's daughter, wool & knitting passionate, is embarking on a workshop-boutique in Paris (Aléfil) in order to propose French quality knitting wool, haberdashery and knitting, crochet and sewing courses.
A live exchange takes place between Aléfil and A&A Patrons, the proposed haberdashery coming directly from A&A Patrons, the wool offered on A&A Patrons coming from the Aléfil shop. The Aléfil workshop-boutique is naturally called "the daughter structure" of A&A Patrons.

In 2013, Amandine moved to Nantes, closes Aléfil and fully supports the mother structure for both the online haberdashery and the fashion design office, while continuing her knitting, crochet and sewing course activity (at Henry & Henriette particularly,).

 

Today, you would have understand it, A&A Patrons has a strong experience in both fashion design (more than 25 years!) but also, and in addition, in creative leisure, technical haberdashery, (mainly French) with complementary family skills!

You will find in an upcoming episode, more information about our work today, our know-how and the structure of the company ...

Did you like the little story?

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This cheese with which buttons are made

Jun 19, 2013 12:00:00 AM

Did you know it?

Early as 1870 the men had the idea and tried to use casein, milk and cheese major component , as a plastics material.

After testing more or less unsuccessful, a French chemist, in the early twentieth century, Jean-Jacques Trillat, found the magic formula: he had the idea to bathe the casein paste in a formalin solution.

The resulting material is full of qualities:

  • biodegradable,
  • anti-allergic,
  • anti-static,
  • great opportunity to be dyed
  • simple and environmentally friendly method of production.

It is named galalith (from greec gala — milk — et lithos — stone).

From the early twentieth century galalith is used primarily by German and French in the manufacture of buttons, jewelry, pens, cigarette, electrical equipment, and replaces the ivory for piano keyboards and harmoniums . At that time there was not much oil, but we already had ideas ...

This is why we can offer you in limited quantities, a collection of casein buttons. Enjoy, there will not be for everyone!

Casein buttons

To complete your culture on the industrial history of casein, we invite you to browse this document (from Société Chimique de France) extremely accurate.

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