A Year of Gratitude – August 18, 2024

I found my gratitude in a memory today. This week marks the anniversary of the day that I opened our Etsy shop in 2012. In so many ways it feels like a lifetime ago. In just as many ways, it seems like yesterday.

I opened our Etsy shop to help and support our farm while allowing me to stay home and focus on the needs of my family. We were new chicken keepers and I was so proud to have built a coop with the help of my parents and to have brought chicks to our farm to call that coop home. I was even more proud of the fresh eggs we were collecting every day.

I decided to make myself an egg basket for collecting those fresh eggs. I had a sewing machine and a bit of fabric left over from craft projects and sewing I had done for my children. I did a little searching online and discovered a few photos of fabric coiled baskets.

I decided to give it a try. It was slow going. I made so many mistakes. I spent a lot of time with a seam ripper in hand. I wish that I had kept track of how many attempts it took for me to create something that even resembled a basket.

Once I had, I worked on making the shape and size the way I had imagined it. Then I had to create the handles and make sure that they were sturdy enough to support the weight of a day’s collection of fresh eggs.

After I had that all worked out, I had to decide how to end the basket. I saw baskets with buttons sewn on to hide the end of the fabric coil. I saw versions where the end of the coil was covered with a flap of fabric and sewn down to the rim of the basket. I held the end in my hand and just didn’t know what to do with it.

Then I turned it into a circle of its own and decided to try and stitch it into the basket. My machine protested quite loudly, but stitched slowly and surely until it was attached. The shape reminded me of a fiddlehead and I loved it even if my sewing machine didn’t.

Since then, I’ve designed dozens of different fabric coiled items and styles sizes of baskets. The fiddleheads grew larger because I liked the bold look of them and wanted them to stand out.

When I opened our online shop, I worried that I wouldn’t sell a single basket. I was so nervous to put my creations online. It seemed like too much to hope for that anyone would notice them or purchase them. Yet you did. In fact, this was the very first basket we sold.

Nearly 2,000 baskets later, I am still at the sewing machine, stitching up fabric baskets for you to use in your homes. It’s a reality I couldn’t have imagined all those years ago. It would have seemed too wonderful for me to believe.

To everyone who has welcomed one of my family’s handmade baskets into their home, I truly thank you for your support. To those of you who leave nice comments on photos of our handmade goods that I share, your kind comments help to encourage me to keep creating and sharing with you.

I’m grateful for so much in my life. Spending my days creating and sharing with you is something I am so thankful for. I am forever mindful that this is only possible because of your kindness and support. Thank you for 12 great years. Here’s to a beautiful year ahead.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.