There’s snow on the ground today it feels like the perfect time to tell the story of how Ozark Modern Crafting began. The basics are not unique. In 2020, I moved back home, started several new hobbies, and lost my job, like many people. It felt like the end of the world, even as I knew it was only a changing of the seasons of life, I just needed to learn and grow.

OZARK LATEROSES

I’d been living in Kentucky for a few years, a quilter working in Paducah and fulfilling a dream of mine. But I missed my home in the Ozarks, as I always do all the way to my bones when I live elsewhere. At my home in the Ozarks, my great-grandmother Wilma’s rose bush tends to bloom into fall, the lateroses heralding the colder climate of the coming winter. As lockdowns began, I yearned for that garden, where I knew the signs, where the world made sense. My job went remote, and I moved home to those lateroses in the Ozarks.

MODERN NOSTALGIA

At the start of 2020, I felt creatively boxed in. I worked as a quilt designer, writing patterns and creating visual tutorials to share the hobby of quilting with a worldwide audience. I found myself paralyzed with the fear of making unpopular choices, or worse, actual mistakes, publicly. I wanted to stretch out as a fiber artist, learn new skills, explore new crafts, expand my library of life experience and develop my voice. I missed how free I felt as a child when I existed to create and learn.

So I followed the advice of many great creatives before me and picked up hobbies that weren’t related to my job. Houseplants were probably the most enriching. I’ve learned so many lessons from plants, like how to harvest seeds and help them grow.

CRAFTING SEEDS

A couple months into lockdown, my job ended and I was lucky enough to be able to take time off from working. I knew I wanted to make something for myself with that time, a garden of creativity I could always retreat to inside of myself. A place where the world makes sense because it’s mine. A practice of creativity capable of withstanding the stresses the world throws at us all. 

I needed to to face a question we all must answer, what business philosopher Simon Sinek refers to as our WHY.

“Regardless of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY—our driving purpose, cause or belief—never changes.”

― Simon Sinek, Start with Why

Did I have an unchanging driving purpose, cause, or belief—the WHY that defines everything I do? So much about the world changed overnight, could there be a universal constant growing inside myself, ready to spring up from the earth? I asked in my heart and the world answered back in three words: Ozark Modern Crafting. 

THE GARDEN

I love the Ozarks and have made preserving its natural beauty my cause. I believe in leading a modern lifestyle which enables sustainable growth through expression and learning. And I am driven to crafting! All my ancestors were craftspeople of various arts and trades. Their tools and creations have been handed down to me through the years and inspire me daily. In my darkest hours, each of these things answered my heart’s question. So I found a way to honor my roots and bring into the future what I want most: Ozark Modern Crafting.

At the end of 2020, I launched an Instagram account and Facebook page, and then I created a secret board on Pinterest. It had begun. I’ll be honest, there’s been more activity on the secret board than on the public pages, but gardens are like that. They grow underground, out of sight, first. Launching this website today feels like the first sprouts of the garden I’ve been growing are finally peaking out.

I look forward to sharing all that’s about to bloom in the world of Ozark Modern Crafting soon! In the meantime, thanks for listening to my story. Stay warm!