Selina's Story

A grandmother's fabric stash, a borrowed sewing machine, and the belief that beautiful things deserve a second life.

The Barn Find

In the summer of 2016, Selina Vaughan helped her aunt clear out a cattle barn on the family property outside McGregor, Texas. Stacked behind fifty years of tack and fencing supplies was a wooden crate packed with folded seed sacks. Most were printed cotton from the 1940s and 1950s: Purina, Dixie Portland, Red Rose feeds. The colours were faded but the graphics were vivid, the fabric still strong.

Selina had been sewing since she was twelve, mostly quilts and simple repairs. She cut into one of the sacks that evening, pinned a rough pattern on the kitchen table, and stitched together the first bag on her grandmother's Singer 99. It was lopsided, the handles were too short, and the lining bunched at the corners. But something about carrying a piece of the 1940s on her shoulder felt right.

Collection of vintage bags arranged on a rustic wooden surface
Handcrafted leather crossbody bag with worn patina on natural linen background

From Hobby to Studio

Within a year, Selina was selling bags at the Waco Downtown Farmers Market every other Saturday. She upgraded to an industrial Juki walking-foot machine, learned to work with vegetable-tanned leather for straps and gussets, and started sourcing sacks from estate sales across central Texas and Oklahoma.

The jewelry came later, almost by accident. While digging through a box of barn hardware she found a handful of old brass grommets and copper rivets. She hammered one flat, punched a hole, and hung it on a strip of leather. A customer at the market bought it off her wrist before she could set up her table. Now jewelry accounts for about a third of the business.

How Things Work Today

Selina works from a converted garage behind her house in Waco. The space is small but functional: a cutting table, two sewing machines, a leather stitching horse, and shelves of sorted seed sacks wrapped in acid-free tissue paper. She makes every bag and piece of jewelry herself, which limits output to about 15 to 20 bags and 30 to 40 jewelry pieces per month.

New pieces are listed on the website as they are finished, usually in batches of four to six items. There is no waitlist and no pre-orders. When something sells, it is gone. That is not a marketing strategy; it is just the reality of working with materials that are 70 or 80 years old and cannot be reordered.

For custom requests or wholesale inquiries, email [email protected].

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