Catalina San Francisco

ARTISAN NAME: Catalina San Martin

CREATIONS: Bags and Totes, Pouches, Scrunchies and other Hair Accessories

ARTISAN STATEMENT: I create one-of-a-kind textile accessories, including pouches, bags, scrunchies, hair accessories, totes, and other small fabric pieces. My work is colorful, playful, and intentionally made in small quantities, with each piece shaped by the fabric itself.

I love working with vintage, reclaimed, and secondhand textiles because they bring character that is difficult to recreate with new materials. Rather than starting with a specific design and searching for the perfect fabric, I often let an unexpected textile inspire the design. I enjoy noticing a beautiful print, an unusual texture, or a remnant that might otherwise be overlooked and imagining what it could become.

For me, making is as much about discovery as it is about the finished object. I love the process of combining unexpected fabrics, playing with scale and color, and finding new possibilities in materials that already have a history.

FABMO CONNECTION: FabMo has become an important part of my creative process and one of my favorite places to source materials. I’m especially drawn to the idea behind FabMo: giving beautiful materials a second life instead of allowing them to become waste.

Shopping at FabMo feels a little like treasure hunting. I never quite know what I’m going to find, and sometimes a fabric that I would never have thought to look for ends up becoming the starting point for an entire collection. Finding remnants in unexpected colors, patterns, or textures pushes me to experiment and make things I might not have created otherwise.

For the Artisans Market, I’ll be bringing a selection of handmade pieces created with reclaimed and secondhand textiles, including materials sourced from FabMo. My goal is to show how these materials can be transformed into something fresh, joyful, and useful while still preserving the character that made me fall in love with them in the first place.

Each piece is handmade by me in my studio, and because I work with limited and reclaimed materials, many of the designs are truly one of a kind. I hope the pieces feel special not only because they are handmade, but because the materials themselves have been given another chapter.