From a young age, Emilie Langley had a penchant for needlework.
Sewing lessons as a teenager put her ahead of the curve; Langley would finish her home-economics assignments much faster than the rest of the students.
“I think that upset the teacher,” Langley said with a laugh.
In college, Langley remembers being shy and self-conscious—although her handmade wardrobe at the time suggested she was anything but. She rocked a rain jacket made from a shower curtain, for example, and (par for the course in the early 2000s, perhaps) flared out, wide-legged pants.
“I liked the process more than anything,” she said. “It’s the creating that’s fun for me.”
Recently, Langley’s creative engine fired up again. She’d been sewing handy, everyday items for her family—snack bags, bowl covers and aprons, for example—when someone suggested there might just be a market for her creations. The idea appealed to her. As a stay-at-home mom and wife to a CNer, she said she was looking for an outlet. Something for herself.
“I live for my kids, but it’s not easy to be with them all the time,” she said. “I know a lot of us struggle with that.”
Sewing has helped Langley get back her agency. It satisfies a creative itch and since the launch of her home-based business, P’tite Grenouille (Little Frog), she’s been able to share her eco-friendly food bags with a growing clientele. She makes other projects, too: she up-cycles clothes she finds at the thrift store, and recently re-upholstered a friend’s RV cushions. She made cloth masks for community members at the start of pandemic and she’s sewed doll carriers so her daughter could carry around a baby, just like mama.
But food bags are her staple, and the cute, compact containers are starting to show up in more and more lunches in Jasper. By doing so, she’s eliminating more and more plastic from the waste stream.
Find Langley’s products at Jade Refillery, the Friends of Jasper National Park store and other retailers, or find P’tite Grenouille on instagram or ptitegrenouillejasper.com to check out her latest creations.
Bob Covey //thejasperlocal@gmail.com
