Jul 5, 2022 - Things to Do

A Philly creator is celebrating Taylor Swift's Pennsylvania roots

Photo courtesy Katie Oxman

It's easy to forget that Taylor Swift is from Pennsylvania, but one Philly creator is celebrating the pop star's local roots.

What's happening: Katie Oxman, who runs @taylorswiftstitch on Instagram, posted a series of cross-stitches earlier this month highlighting Swift's lyrical mentions — both direct and indirect — of the Keystone State.

  • "I wanted to bring a little of Pennsylvania to the stitches beyond the lyrics — with the mountain laurels and the Philly skyline," Oxman told Axios.
  • A burning question is whether the "Eagles T-shirt" mentioned in the song "gold rush" references the band or the football team. No surprises here: Oxman thinks it's the team, a reaction she suspects is shared by most Philadelphians.

The backdrop: @taylorswiftstitch has racked up over 14,000 followers and Etsy customers from as far away as Australia and New Zealand, but it's a relatively new project for Oxman.

  • She crafted her first Swift cross-stitch — lyrics from "seven" — during a pandemic power outage soon after the release of "folklore" in 2020 and only posted it to Instagram at the urging of a friend.
  • Some of her Reels racked up hundreds of thousands of views, sending her follower count skyrocketing.
  • Swift's camp even invited Oxman last year to the New York premiere of the music video for the 10-minute version of "All Too Well" — which came to her personal Twitter account, not @taylorswiftstitch. "It's really a testament to Tay lurking, like she knows everything," she said of Swift's famously very-online nature.

What's next: Keep an eye on Oxman's Etsy store, where you'll likely see the Eagles cross-stitch and patterns for all of her Pennsylvania-linked projects up for sale in the days ahead.

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