Most of us learned to sew as little girls. We sat with patient mothers or grandmas while they taught us to embroider, crochet, knit or sew.  We learned also, how good it feels to take simple things like fabric & thread and, with a little time & effort, make something beautiful & useful from it.  As adults, we love using things every day that we’ve made with our own hands. Wrapping our families & friends with our love in the form of a hand-knit sweater, a hand-sewn dress or a meticulously pieced quilt & surrounding them with bits & pieces of sweetly hand-embroidered pillows, pillowcases or dish towels. We tend our flower gardens, decorate our homes, collect great recipes & cook & bake beautiful meals & desserts. All of these things are ways of taking next to nothing & creating beautiful, warm & comforting things & memories for our loved ones.

The beautiful home is worthless if it’s so perfect your family isn’t comfortable in it. The beautiful garden is no fun if it’s so perfect you can’t allow your children to play in it or pick the flowers. It’s a shame to make a cake so beautiful & perfect that no one will cut into it! I feel the same way about needlework. Perfection is lovely, but… it can also be frustrating & frightening. Frustrating enough if you’re striving for perfection in every stitch, that some people just throw up their hands & quit. Frightening??? How many quilts, tablecloths, dishes etc… do you have stored away for fear of damaging them?  That also means that you never have the joy of using them, loving them to the point of possibly wearing them out.

Embroidery is so easy & relaxing.  Once you get started, you’ll see how easy it is to complete projects that, at first, seemed they would be difficult. My designs are intended to be stitched in an imprecise manner, imperfect and stress free without being primitive or childlike. I have always believed that it’s more important to forge ahead & try to make anything that strikes my fancy, than to strive for perfection, get frustrated, & give up.  The joy is in the doing !   The end result may be imperfect, or designed to be imperfect…. but I made it…. had FUN making it! I’m using it, enjoying it or giving it to someone I love. That’s much more important than every stitch being worthy of a blue ribbon!  

I hope that you like making my designs & if you haven’t made any yet, I hope you’ll try…. & enjoy every minute of the process the way I do !