La Pequeña: Handmade Textiles from Kingston

By   |     |  Makers

Nowadays, most of us can’t trace the origins of anything in our homes beyond the shelves of Target or the homepage of Amazon. “I think about the idea of connection and what it would look like if we knew where the items in our house that we interact with every day came from. What difference would that make?” says weaver Sara Collazo Romay.

This line of reflection led her to found the handwoven textile brand La Pequeña. The brand’s name is a term of endearment meaning “little one” in Spanish, reflecting the small and personal nature of Collazo Romay’s production. With her vibrant array of tea towels, pillows, placemats, and other textile goods, she is on a mission to inject passive domestic routines with connection with handmade items intended to be used and appreciated every day. “When you surround yourself with things made by hands and you know who made it, you have a bigger appreciation for anything that you own,” Collazo Romay says.

Sara Collazo Romay with one of her handwoven textiles.

Growing up in the Galicia region of Spain, Collazo Romay spent countless hours reading the fashion magazines her dad sold at his newspaper stand. She came to the US for college with a love of fashion, graduating from Purdue University with a degree in apparel design. Post-graduation, Collazo Romay ended up in Boston working as a fashion designer for TJX for three years. In her work there, she would draw up designs and send them overseas for production. But with time, she found this approach unfulfilling—she craved to work with her hands like she did in college.

Collazo Romay fell in love with weaving from her small Boston apartment, buying a small frame loom to create wall hangings as a hobby. From there, she sized up to a bigger frame loom and started making placemats, until she finally gave in to the craft and got an even larger floor loom. She began incrementally selling her woven textiles at local markets, launching La Pequeña in 2021. But with limited time and space, the business didn’t fully take off until Collazo Romay moved to Kingston last August. Looking for a change of pace from the large and expensive city, Kingston had the perfect balance of vibrant culture and nature for Collazo Romay.

Weaver Sara Collazo Romay handweaves textiles under the brand name La Pequena, which is a term of enderament in Spanish meaning “little one.”

All woven, cut, and sewn by hand, La Pequeña products are made using natural fibers like cotton and linen, and even alpaca. They’re available online and at a few stores in the area and beyond (Hops Petunia, Kaaterskill Market, Batterby House). Given how much connection is a part of the brand, for the past year, Collazo Romay has been taking her textiles to flea markets across the Hudson Valley, sharing her pieces and her insight on the textile making process with the community face-to-face.

Customers are often shocked to learn that the textiles before them are completely handmade. The process can take days—first warping (aligning the threads vertically, one at a time) before dressing the loom and weaving the threads there. Then washing, pressing, and any additional sewing. It’s a long and sometimes taxing process, but a personal and more ecologically sustainable one. Everything Collazo Romay makes is created to last, and she even makes scrunchies with fabric scraps from other projects.

Her father’s Dominican roots and her own upbringing in coastal Spain are a big source of inspiration in Collazo Romay’s designs. While weaving isn’t a huge part of either culture, she centers her work around the color she saw growing up in Galicia—whether it was in nature, around town, or her own vibrant home. Though she may have found her father’s vivid outfits or pistachio-colored room embarrassingly loud as a teenager, she’s grown a new love for bold color in her designs.

“As I get older, I’m appreciating the joy that palette and living with color brought to my dad’s life,” Collazo Romay says. “Growing up, he dressed in color all the time. That part of our culture really translates to my designs and what I gravitate toward.”

Every product tells Collazo Romay’s story. Striped green pillows along with burnt orange and lilac tea towels are colorful reminders of Collazo Romay’s dedicated process. Blue and white textiles are reminiscent of the Galician flag. Springtime pinks and yellows resemble the colorful flowers of the local nature. With La Pequeña, she’s found her calling in brightening others’ homes.

“It’s so interesting to feel like something feels just right. I feel like I’ve arrived at my place and I want to do it for the rest of my life,” Collazo Romay says.

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