Natural and silky as the "Soies de Marie"! Spun silk, floss silk, six ply thin silk with their color charts, fibers from Madagascar, India, Laos, silk ribbons in three sizes (2, 4, and 7mm) and 58 colors that you can wash at 104ºF, embroidery threads, threads for bobbin lace, knitting yarn, natural dyes in packs of 100 et 300 g .... amazing Marie! And what if we asked Marie Foyer to tell us the story of her company ?
“Les Soies de Marie open in 2003, but I started working with fibers a long time ago. My first threads were produced near Saumur, in the Loire Valley, at "La Magnanerie du Coudray" to show the public all the steps to create silk fibers, make silk threads and fabric and hand dyed them. Embroidery fans and people doing lace work were thrilled by the threads and convinced me to get into the thread business. They started to call my threads the "Soie de Marie"...
Thirty years ago a was making for my own use knitting yarn or weaving yarn. With time I gained experience. I invested in equipment and started to produce silk threads and thin silk for bobbin lace which are technically more challenging for a "craft-women".
Today my product line has two main kinds embroidery threads:
- Floss silk made with lightly twisted filament from the cocoon so that the silk keep its shiny aspect. It is recommended for traditional embroideries (parallel stitch, long and short stitch)... giving them a precious rendering.
- Spun silk made with shappe silk with 6 strands which is great for beginners, very easy to work with in 1 or 2 strands.
Very quickly people asked me for silk ribbons with colors matching my threads. Now you can choose between 3 sizes (2,4 and 7 mm).
The dyes are all natural dyes. Not to follow environmental market trends, but because I always used them and because I observed that all the colors combine well with all the others, like in nature. With artificial dyes you cannot do that!
The colors can be washed at 104ºF. However take all the usual precautions specially with red, dark green and dark blue...
I also sell knitting yarns (my first love...). I can be more creative with knitting yarn compared to embroidery threads and I have more fun producing it.
Beginning this year the "Soie de Marie " becomes the "Soie de Marie ... et d'ailleurs" . For the last 10 years,I have been travel ing often to discover silk craftmen and traditional hand dyers in far away countries. I love to return to Madagascar, India or Laos. I developed friendly working relationship with those craftmen, and now work with them. Actually they often are women craftmen. I want their production to be discovered and I plan to create a new company that will offer to the customers all kind of natural fibers ready to spin or to weave. This company will be called "La Fibre Voyageuse".
The internet has become an important mean to sell those products but I will continue to go to trade shows to meet my customers. They need to touch see and feel the fibers and the colors!
I would like to thank Marie Foyer for having written this text for filigram.I did my best to translate this text without changing the spirit of it. Quite a challenge, but I had so much pleasure reading it when I did received it, only to discover her passion for fibers and dyes! You can order her fine products online, it is in English.