I am vintage.

I've been throwing around the term vintage for a long time now. Since the early 2000's the term started to mean something, imbibe a feeling - a nostalgia: a style. Vintage to me evokes a picture in my mind of a white farm house kitchen in pale aqua and whites with feed-sack cloth for curtains that looks out onto the expanding prairie. Just search 'vintage kitchen' on google images or pinterest and you'll see what I mean.

Cross Back Apron: Pattern from acraftyfox.net

But then I wonder is vintage something I have been taught or do I really know it? How do I know it? Is it that you'll know it when you see it kind of a thing or is it more concrete than that? Can it be defined by a number? Oh yes it can: 1940-1980. Bam. Vintage.

I was born in 1979 right on the edge of vintage. Lookey there; by the very definition I am a vintage person. I grew up around things that are now considered vintage. The knick knacks in my parents house, the hand-me-down clothes I wore, the television I watched, the fabrics my mom sewed with; all of it was produced in the vintage window.


Going back another generation to my Grandparents and the things they were surrounded with firmly placed the range of 1940 to 1980 in my early childhood memory. Their house, their aesthetic became the creative language of my youth. The patterns in the fabric, the style of clothes we wore, the music we listened too. My dad always had the oldies station and the top 40 station programmed on the push button radio in the beat up vintage car he drove. Pushing between his youth and my older sister's pre-teen demands.



So when I say I am drawn to vintage fabrics, vintage patterns, vintage everything; it's because I am vintage. And I like it that way; I want to be true to that part of me. I am not modern, I am not a great big expanse of white with a square strategically placed here and there. I am a big 'ol cornucopia of color, shape and repetition. I am making due with what I have. I am re-purposing the old in a usable way. I am aqua, red, yellow, blue and green.

So when I bring to you this newest form of Blue Bird Sews please know it is not for kitsch. It is not to jump on a bandwagon of vintage. I am in the vintage camp and always have been. It's just not until now that I have found my best form of expression to it and I can't wait to share it! But it's not ready yet; I am still cutting, ripping, formulating, measuring, asking and percolating on it. Believe me, you'll know when it's ready.



It's gonna be so fun! Yee-haw!

Kelly





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