Like most great romances Michelle Eigenberger's love affair with vintage fabric hit suddenly and with dizzying intensity.
"Probably within a year I had too much fabric. I had no idea what I could possibly do with it," Eigenberger said.
It all started a few years back when her and her boyfriend stumbled into an Urban Outfitters while hanging out in Chicago one day.
"I saw a patchwork quilt at Urban Outfitters...for $300. It was too much and the made-in-China fabric was total crap, but it was pretty crap," Eigenberger said.
Eigenberger dusted off an unopened sewing machine she'd received for Christmas a few years before and stated scouring thrift stores for fabric with no intentions other than making a quilt of her own.
"I stopped at a few thrift stores and within a week I had 100 of yards of fabric. I thought 'This is cool. I have some fabric. I've found some really cool stuff'," Eigenberger said.
She finished her quilt, but the seed was planted. She started seeking out more fabric and soon stumbled across a veritable goldmine when she found a woman in Saukville unloading yards and yards of vintage fabrics, with gorgeous floral prints, atomic designs, silks and polished cottons.
"A lot of them even had little handwritten cutting tags from the '50s with the date and the store it was purchased at," Eigenberger said.
With more fabric than she could possibly use, Eigenberger launched Bolted, a vintage fabric and sewing supply operation she first displayed at the East Side Green Market.
People from Milwaukee's vibrant independent fashion and crafting scenes quickly started snatching up her hard to find fabrics, and when the summer ended Eigenberger found further success on the online handmade and vintage bazaar Etsy, and now at Project M Boutique in Riverwest.
"There is always the potential for these fabrics to be shredded at a rag house and turned into rags and be completely gone forever. I like the idea that you are rescuing it," Eigenberger said.
Eigenberger, who does public relations for a local non-profit, spends her lunch hour searching through thrift stores, and nearly every other available moment hunting out rummage and estate sales in search of the next big find.
"I really love finding a huge stack of fabric from someone who was a seamstress or was also a collector at an earlier time," said Eigenberger. "You are not going to find colors or patterns or prints like this any more. This stuff was all hand drawn and you can see the hand of the artist in the print. Now you are going to see stuff that looks like an illustrator file, you know?"
Eigenberger said she is working to organize a vintage fair for the spring where collectors of all things vintage can sell. She continues to make quilts and accessories using the fabric she finds and says she takes great joy in seeing her finds used in other people's work.
"I love being able to see what other people can do with the stuff that I've got," Eigenberger said.
