Honey Girl Books & Gifts: cozy, with an edge...
Sustaining Community and Humanity
Honey Girl Books and Gifts is the creation of Julia Douthwaite Viglione, a writer and teacher as well as a designer / seamstress. The mission is to sustain and nurture humanity through connections: connections created by literature and textile arts.
We care about the material aspect of sustainability. We enjoy restoring old quilts and making new ones of old fabrics, as well as producing snazzy new works with distinctive cottons from France, Ghana, Senegal, Japan, and the USA.
Our quilts, when made of vintage linens, discarded clothing, and repurposed fabrics, provide one kind of sustainability. The toys we make--Luxury Troll Boudoirs and Eek dog pillows--provide another kind of sustainability. They are made of leftover quilt squares, batting, and vintage satins as well as artisanal wooden cigar boxes and used troll dolls.
But creative spirits need sustaining too. That is why, while on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame, in 2012 I created "Write YOUR Story": a semester-long writing workshop for people ages 8-12 in South Bend, Indiana. In 2018, it came home with me to Seattle, WA. The Winter / Spring 2024 group created a fabulous book, The Troll of the West Seattle Bridge and had a blast doing so! Enrollment for the Summer 2024 term is now open!
WYS aims to inspire kids with the same love of reading and writing that has made our lives so rich and satisfying. The price for all classes, as it always was, is free.
Like Write YOUR Story, HGBG is a deliberately small, sustainable business. We use fabrics from all kinds of sources, as appropriate for the products. Each work is slightly different. All products are made in West Seattle, WA, USA.
An in-person book club on "Classic Novels (and Movies)" is another way to weave together literature and community.
West Seattle Classic Novels (and Movies) May 2024 meeting:
When: Sunday, May 19, 2024, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Where: C and P Coffee, on California Ave SW: we gather at an outdoor table in the back.
Title: Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, trans. Sandra Smith (written 1941-42; trans. 2006)
Who: All are welcome! Free and open to the public. Discussions begin with a fun trivia quiz, with prizes for the winners!
fyi: All the trivia quizzes since 2020 are posted here: https://nd.academia.edu/JuliaDouthwaite/Blogs
The "RARE" quilt initiative: I am making two quilts per year, customized for recipients of the Roosevelt Alumni for Racial Equity (RARE) scholarships. I love contributing this way as an alumna of Roosevelt HS. The first went to Leah and Elsabeth in 2021; the third went to Elroe in 2022; and the fourth and fifth went to Camila and Yuena in 2023! Stand by for news on the 2024 recipients. Congratulations to all! Go Roughriders!
P.S. All these activities cost money, of course. When you make a purchase from Honey Girl Books and Gifts, you are helping underwrite them! And you are supporting our efforts at building community and combatting loneliness for everyone, big and small.
For years, Grandma's 1928 White Rotary sewing machine was the sole support for HGBG. Although a lovely new Juki machine has taken its place, you can hear the soothing sounds of Grandma's machine in action (above).
Grandma with her family in
White Salmon, WA circa 1915
(she’s front row, second from right)