Made In West Virginia

 We we wanted to put together a design for all the beautiful Mountain Mamas out there, and finally got it done with a bit of helpful inspiration. This is a preview of the completed shirt, which will be coming soon! With this design, we wanted to express what we feel is the epitome of what a "Mountain Mama" can be, a natural, carefree, talented, no-nonsense, lovely woman – as at home on a front porch or a mountain top as she is in evening wear and heels. A versatile, strong, West Virginia Beauty. I had this ideal in my mind for quite a long time, but wasn't sure how to represent it graphically. That was before I saw this picture...

This photo hit me like shot when I first saw it somewhere in the depths of Tumblr. From what I can find out, it's from a 1967 issue of National Geographic that has a big feature about West Virginia in it. There was a copy of it on-line that has since disappeared. I DO know that the girl in the picture is a native West Virginian who was just getting into playing the fiddle, and mused about its time-honored tradition in our state. If I can ever track down the article, I'll add more details to her story.  Seeing this image, it instantly hit me that this is it! This is the personification of what I had in my mind as a pure WV girl. We've illustrated it for our Mountain Mama design, with some modifications. We decided not to include the little shirtless fella there (sorry bro), even though being an actual Mama is another aspect of the ideal, he just looked out of place in the design.

The shirt will be a white and yellow print on a green women's v-neck. The words "West Virginia Mountain Mama" will accompany the illustration. We're super stoked to get this out to the public, and we'll be debuting it at this year's Cheat River Festival!