Designer’s Tribute to Her Mother is New Gift Idea for Your Mom, Wife, Girlfriend or Daughter

Handbags and Tote Bags quality-crafted by hand from vintage fabrics, quilt pieces and feedsacks, each distinct in design now available for Mother’s Day 2010

Guilford, CT— A Connecticut designer who creates one of a kind antique feedsack and vintage fabric handbags to honor women like her mother, introduces new collection, as great gift idea just in time for Mother’s Day.

Common Thread Vintage Designs handbags and tote bags tell stories of American women. Each new Common Thread Vintage Designs™ Collection is defined by the type of fabric that is used, as well as by the design of the bag itself. And each is a reflection of the life and times of real women who lived, worked, toiled, and sewed during different periods of American history.
“These designs tell stories of courage. Of overcoming hard times… Of old-fashioned ingenuity and creativity,” said designer Patti Biller in announcing the collection. “These versatile, sturdy bags are handcrafted from old quilt tops and “orphan” quilt blocks--those that were pieced together but never made into quilts--along with feedsacks—the colorful sacks that were used for more than a century to hold flour, sugar and animal feed.”

Common Thread fabrics date from as far back as the mid-1800s to those that were popular in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, during two World Wars and the Great Depression.
Each Common Thread Vintage Designs™ collection is represented by a woman…and she in turn represents thousands of other women who cut and stitched and quilted and labored to create pieces that were functional, practical and beautiful.

“But there is one woman who has a special place in the Common Thread family, because she is family.” Said Biller, a mother of four grown children. “The picture of Florrie is a 1946 photograph of Florence Zuckerman, a young woman living in New York City, on her way to work. Not long after this picture was taken, she got married and started a family.” Florence Biller, or Florrie as she's known, is designer Patti Biller’s 86-year old mother, and she resides with her daughter in Guilford, Connecticut.

The Common Thread Vintage Designs™ collection is available to browse and buy online at www.commonthreadvintage.com. The store also offers gift certificates, so the woman in your life can choose the bag and the story that speaks directly to her. Ten percent (10 %) of each Gift Certificate purchased goes to Feeding America, the nation's leading hunger relief charity making this truly the gift that gives.

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Contact: Common Thread Vintage Designs. 877-321-1930