Little Sister

"Anything worth doing is worth doing well."   

    

That's one of the many sayings and verses we copied into our notebooks in grade school, and it stayed with me.  It's my firm belief.  If I'm gonna do it, I want to do it all the way.

I was lucky to have a mother who was home with me, who sewed for me, who gave me the gift of those precious growing up hours and days, when I discovered what I loved to do. (I wonder what happens to kids growing up these days with daily sports schedules and phones glued to their hands and no free time to find what they might love.)  Some of those hours I spent watching her sew.  Or I'd get out the material box and make little doll clothes of my own.  Other days were spent coloring and drawing and writing letters and stories.

Calligraphy was something I sampled in a 7th grade art class and then took up in earnest after high school, determined to teach myself.

Inspired by my aunt June, I learned to smock in the fall of '94, and since then I've made over 100 smocked and embroidered outfits, many of them using my own designs.

Now here I am, doing many of those things that I love for others.

Besides being a talented musician, my oldest brother, Leo, builds the most beautiful guitars and mandolins.  While nothing that I do is on a par with his creations, I hope that at least the love and care and attention to detail that I give to my work measures up to his.