Kelly Wilkinson - Weekend Handmade: More Than 40 Projects and Ideas for Inspired Crafting

Published in 2011 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang An imprint of ABRAMS

Text copyright 2011 Kelly Wilkinson
Photographs copyright 2011 Thayer Allyson Gowdy

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilkinson, Kelly.
Weekend handmade : more than 40 projects and ideas for inspired crafting / Kelly Wilkinson ; photographs by Thayer Allyson Gowdy.

p. cm.

"A Melanie Falick book."
ISBN 978-1-58479-940-5 (alk. paper)
eISBN 978-1-61312-225-9
1. Handicraft. I. Title.
TT145.W55 2011
745.5--dc22 2010046871

Editor: Melanie Falick
Designer: onethread
Production Manager: Tina Cameron

Stewart, Tabori & Chang books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

115 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.abramsbooks.com

In the midst of a busy week, the promise of the weekend glints in the distance.

During the week, I sometimes feel like I dont own my time. It belongs to work, deadlines, commitments, and to-do lists. While those obligations are necessary parts of a full life, any leftover time during the week can feel a little squeezed. But weekends are different. Projects can slowly unfurl. Ideas that percolate all week can finally take shape when I have time to gather materials, experiment, and create.

Because I thrive alternately on solitude and company, I try to incorporate both into my weekends. A Saturday or Sunday morning may start with a quiet walk, followed by time spent listening to the radio and reading the newspapers. Evenings might be livelier: friends and family around our big dining room table, with food and wine and games.

On my most ideal weekends, there is always time for crafting. When I have a clutch of empty hours or a whole day or two, I can finally indulge my desire to sit down and make something. Of course, there is the deep satisfaction that comes from being immersed in a process and the subsequent rush of accomplishment. But there is also satisfaction when I realize that what I make reveals something deeper. I know the word values is overused and has lost a lot of meaning. But I recognize my values in many of my projects. The act of gathering people around a table to eat and talk and laugh is precious to me, and I want my environment to reflect that. So I happily spend time sewing tablecloths, printing napkins, and making centerpieces to enrich that experience.

The same is true of making time to decorate even a simple planter: I love to garden, so every time I open my backdoor to water our back stoop herb garden, seeing that planter brings me a little surge of happiness and pride. The projects I make and the ones Ive included in this book reveal what I love and value: items with a story and sense of place; relaxed weekends that include family and friends; a home that is pretty and welcoming.

A lot of this grew out of my childhood. In 1973, my parents moved out of Washington, DC, to a then-small town in Virginia, hemmed in by cornfields. A couple years later, they went whole-hog and bought an old hay barn from a dairy farmer who planned to burn it down. They dismantled the barn and re-assembled it board by board on a new piece of property they bought in the wide-open countryside.

Its a longer story than I have room for herethe money ran out faster than my parents imagined, so my father and then-pregnant mother moved in with two toddlers, without finished plumbing or a front door or kitchen sink. My dad enrolled my mom in a plumbing, wiring, and carpentry course when she was almost seven months pregnant. My older sister and I slept together in a room without windows since there was no glass in any of the frames yet.

Those years were full of challenges for my parents. But, for my sisters and me, the barn was a wildly creative place. It could absorb whatever activity the three of us dreamed up: We rolled back rugs to go roller-skating, drew on concrete floors before carpet went in, and staged elaborate plays on the second-floor walkway. Big Wheels lived side-by-side with carpentry tools and stained-glass supplies. The kitchen tablean old barn door on legswas where we finished homework while our mother painted, and upstairs my dad kept a table saw and stacks of barn wood to finish the ceiling.

Since the barn was a work-in-progress my entire childhood, I sort of feel like we grew up togetherthe barn and Iuncovering who we were going to become. In many ways, I have held tight to that love of transformation. As my parents turned an old hay barn into a home, I have always been drawn to taking simple materials and transforming them into projects that feel sophisticated and intimate.

I went on to college, and then for years lurched back and forth between journalism and more traditionally creative work. I would work as a reporter in a newsroom for a couple of years, then quit and do something radically different, and then return again to journalism. Along the way, I stitched and sold a line of aprons and worked in a jewelry studio and at a knitting design company.

Finally, I think I have found my niche. I work in public radio as a reporter, and I also design craft projects for magazines, newspapers, and websites. In 2008, I started a blog called Make Grow Gather, and began work on what would ultimately become this book. In retrospect, the detours that I once considered wildly incongruous now make sense within this integrated life of journalism and crafting.

Today I live in a city apartment, where I try to reconcile the very different worlds of my dreamy rural childhood and urban adulthood. Sometimes, Im conflicted and want to flee to the country full-time. I chalk this up to being equal parts Laura Ingalls and Holly Golightly. But San Francisco lets me indulge that whole range of personality. I can hop a train downtown to catch a movie or meet a friend for a cocktail, but I can also grow vegetables in my backyard or hike along a trail thats thick with blackberries in the summer.