Fabric has always been a part of Colleen’s life. Her grandmothers, mother and aunt all sewed and she learned her appreciation of fabric from them. Colleen started out as a quilter in 1987. Her love of vintage linens, laces, and garments steered her in the direction of recreating aprons and clothing. She uses vintage handkerchiefs, bureau scarves, table runners, scraps of quilts and feed sacks to recreate half aprons into full aprons and to give old garments a new look. Using vintage linens is one of the ways Colleen up-cycles, she is recreating the old into new.
Colleen also likes to recreate jewelry using old silverware, broken pieces of jewelry, shells, and found objects. She loves to work resin and soldering techniques into the pieces.
Colleen's love of sewing and everything vintage is supported by her husband Rick and their 2 dogs, Sam and Rosie and she is very grateful for this support!
We have been asked the same questions consistently, so here is some history of Moonfaerie Designs, in case you have the same questions! The name came from the love of everything Faerielike and the love of the Moon.
Our very first business was a quilting business, Cottontail Quilts by Colleen which was started in the 80s.
Colleen branched into aprons after finding a wrinkled hankie and a soiled half apron in a bag of lace she purchased at a flea market. She discovered the non lace linens at the bottom of the bag. She washed and cleaned them up and saw that they matched, and the Everyday Frilly was born. She wanted to create a country looking apron and after visiting a friends antique business and spotting some feed sacks, her Feedsack Apron line came to life. Colleen names and creates stories for all of the Everyday Frillies. The first one she names was after a character in her favorite book, Little Women. The apron reminded her of Amy. She has used customers relatives names and stories on her aprons, as she hears a lot of apron stories and loves every single one. On the bib of her Country Apron uses pictures of animals and flowers that either she has taken, or her friends have taken. Most of the animals belong on farms that her friends own.
Colleen has a special helper, her chihuahua pug mix, Rosie. She helps sort the linens to match them up and lends moral support when ever she can.
Colleen gets most of her materials from flea markets, friends who are her shoppers, fellow vendors. She occasionally comes home to find a bag of linens hanging on the door knob. She is very grateful to everyone who helps her in her pursuit of everything linen.
Colleen often tells people her job is to save the linens, one piece at a time.
Before her full time vending job, she worked in retail and customer service. She loved the merchandising and window dressing parts of her jobs and is thankful that she is using her degree from Endicott College in retail along with taking many fashion design classes.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask!!