Thread by Thread: How Passion Took Over My Home

It started, like most beautiful obsessions do, in silence. Not a bang, not a proclamation. Just the subtle gravity of one good piece pulling me deeper into the archive of American grit and elegance.

Finding the right pieces for Curating Americana isn't a walk through a curated showroom. It's a pilgrimage through the overlooked. It means sifting, again and again, through racks that smell like basements and dreams, navigating thrift stores lit by humming fluorescents, and estate sales where ghosts whisper through wool.

Yesterday, a new clothing rack arrived—a monument to order amidst the chaos. One row for coats and longer pieces, two for shirts. At least, that was the idea. The "two" became one the moment adult-sized sleeves got involved. Unless I was planning to sell OshKosh B'gosh, I had to revise. No matter. Every inch of storage is a silent soldier in this growing army.

This work—this passion—has begun to seep into every corner of my life. Like water through floorboards, it's found its way into every room. The guest room now houses sweaters with stories. The dining table occasionally moonlights as a denim evaluation station. Even the garage, once a shrine to suburban normalcy, now shelters the ghosts of field coats and forgotten brogues.

And I love it.

I can be brushing the nap back into a vintage Zero King while the kids laugh at cartoons. I can polish a pair of old Johnston & Murphys while my wife and I talk about nothing and everything in the living room. The rituals of this work fold into the rhythms of my life. The practical blends with the poetic.

But it's my mind that carries the true weight. Every moment, I'm scanning. Watching. Wondering. Is that flannel on the stranger walking past me a hidden Pendleton? Could that estate sale just a few blocks away hold a deadstock Schott waiting to be reborn?

This isn't just sourcing. It's seeking. And the pieces I find, the ones that make it into Curating Americana, they have to pass the test of potential. Will they be seen? Admired? Worn with pride by someone who gets it?

This work is cluttered. It's inconvenient. It's unreasonable.

But it feels like home.