Homespun E4 | Sara Delaney

[Music] hey everyone welcome to Homespun this week we're going to be talking to Sarah Delaney Sarah welcome I'm so excited to have you here we have spent some time together in the past but I'm glad that we'll be able to sit and chat yeah and that everyone can learn a little bit more about you I'm really happy to be on Homespun this is fun Misty yeah so how about tell everyone your background sure um so you know non-traditional work path um you know you graduate high school you have an idea you think you know what you're going to do with your life um it goes a little sideways you try a bunch of stuff and by the time you're almost 50 you're like oh okay I think I figured out this this adulting thing um so I I had a very artsy fartsy High School um you know hch chorus music drum yeah that that stuff yes um and I went off to college um for theater I went to hofra on Long Island gosh um and I started working in the costume shop for my work study and I was like oh this is a thing yeah like this part of the theater I really like I mean and homac and i' been sewing for years and making clothes you know when you're little you make Barbie clothes out of whatever scraps of fabric you can find you can get your hands on yeah but that working in that costume shop for me was just like an eyeopener to the magic that fabric can have in any setting yeah and so that kind of stuck with me and I thought about going to you know to fit or or Parson and I was like you know I don't really want the pressure of all of that so I'll just kind of do my own thing um and then my husband and I end up moving to Georgia while he was pursuing his degree and so I sort of took the the back seat we I worked in a lot of retail jobs yeah as you like you do pay the bills um we came back home we had our family and somewhere along the line when my girls were little um I think right around uh when everything crashed in 2008 like we had a really hard financial year and the holidays were coming up we just didn't have the you know the funds for gifts and I was like you know I think I have a bin of yarn somewhere mhm from a blanket that I was making in high school or college think I can do something with that so I made hats and scarves for everybody that year and then my hands just didn't stop yeah oh I love that I just couldn't stop and so I I did some more retail work I worked at a major retailer a book retailer for years and I started a knitting group there and someone in that knitting group was like Hey you know this local yarn shop I work at is hiring do you maybe want to come work there and so I interviewed and that was 18 years ago wow step one of many yeah so yarn has pretty much been my life for the last 18 years wow yeah that's amazing and now you teach and design and that is your whole world yeah somewhere in the middle of all of that I went back to school okay uh for my ucation degree and I thought I was going to teach kids cuz I was like I have my kids I love my kids it would be great and I got in a classroom with kids and I don't like kids oh I always say I really like my kids but maybe not everyone else's but you know I don't know if that's true either but just in smaller doses that was that was a difficult realization for me was okay I don't really like kids I really like my kids but kids on mass not so much well exactly and I think it's probably better that you realize that and and changed then stay in there and not enjoy it yeah so then that shifted my degree path a little bit and I went uh and worked on curriculum development okay which really lent itself well to the the the teaching of crochet and knitting because there's there isn't a textbook no to teach somebody how to knit or teach somebody how to crochet so it it helped me to develop what I needed to to to teach people how to do what I love right which is play with yarn and to be able to share that with the world yeah I love that so now that you do this fulltime what does your day-to-day look like uh honestly it's kind of fun right I get to think about yarn and I get to buy yarn and I get to play with yarn and I get to design with yarn so I mean there's a lot of administrative stuff in the middle of all of that so there's a lot of desk time and there's there's meetings and there's phone calls but a good good chunk of my time is really just thinking about the stuff that I really like I mean you get to do this too with with quilting absolutely and it's some people ask you know but if it's your if it's your passion if it's what you like don't you kind of hate that it's your job and there are days where it's tough yes because it's the part of the job that I don't love the best but most days it's it's really just fun yeah I agree I agree and it would be lying to say there aren't hard days and sometimes I'm like why did I decide to make this hobby a profession but at the end of the day when you sit down and you're like what else would I be doing right you could be working some other corporate job eight hours a day and then be like where do I fit what I like into my life exactly where it just is our life it's very fortunate that's for sure I feel very lucky to do it it sounds like you do too yeah it's a blessed place to be in when your work is what you love absolutely and I think that it does take some balance of saying like what am I what am I capable of today how do I make sure that I still have time to be creatively fed myself yeah and also do the work that needs to be done so are there things that you do in order to find that balance um I'd love to say yes but no really yeah no I just my hands almost never stop and it so they're always making something so I think that's one thing that differ between you know when you're creating things and when I'm creating things I can be on an airplane I can be sitting watching TV still and still be doing it I can be sitting at the dinner table afterwards talking with you know my husband and my sister and her husband on our Friday night dinners and my hands are still going yeah that's true yeah so like our my samples get made a little bit easier because I don't always have to carve out the time for it yeah and then that leaves my active working time open for what's next you know sketching and thinking and designing and then all of the the admin of working behind the scenes so it helps that these babies sort of run on autopilots on time yeah rock stars just going nonstop I love that so what does the design process look like for you how do you come up with your designs um so this goes back to when I worked in that costume shop at Hofstra um it was run by an amazing woman named Deedra Maguire who designed all of the costumes for all of the Productions on campus and there were I think I remember three different theaters and each theater did like four to five Productions per season um and she was originally an artist who sort of fell into costume design and so she would paint these panels wow of every costume that that she wanted to see and then she'd find fabric swatches that would that would fit and so that really Unknowing M at the time informed my design process so it it's always it's always a visual idea for me at first and I am not I am not a a paper artist I don't I don't draw well but I can draw shapes and I can add the colors in and then that's enough for me to start thinking about all right then how do I actually make my stitches turn into this thing yeah yeah that's really cool well and it's interesting um just having this conversation has kind of triggered a memory for me I guess and that costume making when my kids were young is kind of what got me back sewing um because I wanted to make their Halloween costumes I thought that seemed really fun and I learned quickly as I was doing that that the details are really what make the magic of the costume and so I I carry a lot of that into my design as a quilter do you see the same thing when you're designing for knit and crochet yeah yeah so there's a lot of um having you know worked on that cost costume shop and and made a lot of my clothes in the early years and I made a lot of clothes for my girls when they were babies cuz it's easy when they're small yes less Fabric and they don't argue so much about what you make um that I I approach knit and crochet designs as if they are fabric constructions yeah so I am in my brain I'm making the fabric pieces that I would have cut out of to sew together so I really even just the accessories even simple things my brain is approaching them in terms of garment construction that's really fascinating I would have never considered that but you Antion that I talked to earlier um both mentioned it as Fabric and I would have not made that connection otherwise and I think you're right that's exactly what you're doing a you're just doing the entire work to to make that fabric as well and we get to skip that step a little bit on the quilting side but it's incredible it's really incredible and I think that the freedom that you have in order to to design from nothing and make exactly what you're looking for yeah is really although I mean there's there's a journey to that I'm sure that's true yeah you know I mean just like when you when you learn how to sew and you learn how to quote the the simple things that you learn at first and and you learn more complicated as you feel ready for it absolutely some people Dive Dive Right In um my daughter's thirdd grade teacher learned how to knit by making an Icelandic sweater because that's what the lady that taught her was making and she's like I'm not going to do anything special this is what I'm making this is what you're making wow most people don't start with Icelandic sweaters it's a simple scarf that is very difficult yeah well and and for me as I love all Fiber Arts I I get sucked into anything that is soft and pretty and I can you know touch it and feel it and love it that is totally my world but I have struggled with finding my path in knitting and crochet and I don't know if it's just not my first love or what what the issue is there but like I am constantly in the middle of projects there and then I feel overwhelmed by them so so do you have a secret it's just that your hands never stop is that it my hands never stop it's sort of like my anxiety meds like this is what calms me down um I think it's probably a combination of the space in your life and the right project to really spark your like there's a lot of really nice things out there and you're like oh yeah it's a cute scarf I can make that scarf but if you're losing interest in it in the middle of it then it it's just a nice scarf it's not oh you love that's the scarf I have to make that so yeah I you're just not there yet it's all right you're a Knitter but you just haven't had you just haven't found the project that is fully pulled you into that world I think that must be right because there's there's so many things and like I said I can I can get gaze at yarn all day I guess is what I'm saying but um I am not one that likes to have a lot of Unfinished projects so then that is that's been a challenge for me in my life to just have these and I'm like oh how do I come back to that so you're a project person so that there's two kinds of people there's project people and there's process people okay and so the project people are my brand can Encompass this project and I have to work on it from start to finish I'm not going to be happy unless my level of perfection is achieved in creating this project um I'm a process person okay explain I'm just like I'm just going to make a thing I get halfway through it I'm like you know I learned something with this but I also don't really like it Move Along yep you know what I like that I like that I think you're you're spot on though I think I am a project person I see that in my life quite often I have I have a something that I'm designing or something that I'm working on and it's always that in goal that I'm I'm moving towards and it has to do with that finished project yep and like that's your focus until you get to the end of it and then you can move on to the next thing I probably have a 100 started things and it doesn't bother you no not at all that sounds very freeing I'll be honest sometimes things sit in Project Purgatory for a couple of years yeah and then I'll take him out and go oh that's where that is I'm ready to finish that now they're not just like calling to you like look at me remember me over here you're feeling bad no no because every every project for me it's it's a learning process yeah and so if I'm if all I learn from this project is that I don't enjoy it that's a lesson learned that's enough yeah put it aside and the great thing about yarn is that it is almost infinitely reusable that is so true it drives my husband baddy when I pull things apart I me but he Carpenter Works in Wood I'm like wouldn't you like to be able to uncut that wood and have your 2x4 again and start over and he just it it boggles him he can't wrap his head around it it he's he has to leave the room I'm sure there has to be some amount of discomfort with pulling all that work apart though no not really no cuz I my hands are just busy they're just they're just making stitches and if it turns into something that's finished awesome yeah if it's usable great but I have finished things and gone that was a great project I'm never going to use this I'm never going to wear it but I really like the yarn really wind it all back up yep wow yep I am so impressed honestly like I I think that's an amazing like freedom and also self-awareness to be like yeah I learned this thing it was a great lesson but you're right in the fact that you yarn is unique in that way that you can you can basically start over at square one yeah I mean I have friends and I I did this in the in our lean years yeah you head to the thrift store and you find a really nice sweater and you unwind it yeah so that you can use the yarn to make it how you want it yep I love that yep that's really cool so is there someone who is in your life has been a huge inspiration to you whether it's in knitting and crochet or just your creative path in general um I think like a a lot of uh older knitts uh Elizabeth simmerman was a huge influence her PBS show was fantastic I used to watch episodes of that right alongside Julia Child yes you know when I was growing up and she had a really great uh free free approach to what she did she's like just do what makes you happy just try it yeah you know mistakes are going to happen you might discover the next best thing mhm by making a mistake yeah uh and in a lot of my classes and and in how I teach I I often say if you've watched any of our one big happy episodes I learn more from taking things apart than from doing them right the first time well I think that's absolutely true even on the quilting side of things the longer I do this the less afraid I am of making those mistakes because you realize one it could be a whole another design that you didn't even know you were working on and two it's just part of the journey it's just part of the process and it's nothing to be ashamed of no or to be afraid of really if you can give yourself the grace and forgive yourself for those mistakes because we're not born knowing everything right it's life is a learning process absolutely and change happens all the time and sometimes you think I know this I've got it I'm good and then the universe throws you a curveball you're like okay let's try it this way now and if you can just be open into that yeah it's a little easier so you mentioned one big happy a little bit and people may not realize that you're now part of Missouri Star yes so do you want to talk a little bit about that sure so um one big happy yarn company has always been a sister company to Missouri Star um but uh in the winter of 2024 uh we sort of folded in fully it was a little bit of a rocky transition um but once we got everything sorted out it's it's everything that everybody loved about one big happy so it's all of the great Yarns our great patterns our fantastic tutorials um myself Jenny fish some of our guest designers coming in which I just I love I mean I love being able to share what we do with people so that they can begin to not be so afraid and and to find the right projects um and so that's all under Missouri star knitting in crochet now okay and it means that I get to do more you know cross craft projects with you yes uh and with the rest of the Missouri Star team and I get to spend even more of my time really creatively building this side of the brand where at one big happy there was a lot more admin stuff on the backside and running a whole separate website and and managing the digital advertising and there's whole teams that handle that here at Missouri Star so it it frees me up really to think about what the future of the knitting and crochet side of Missouri Star looks like making sure that we bring in incredible products for the customers that make me happy right because if I don't love it it's it's hard for me to help you love it absolutely um and then just making sure that we put just the best content out there yeah yeah I love that and it's it's it's nice for me as someone who is still very much a beginner Knitter and barely dabbled in crochet we're going to fix that I know I know to know that someone of your expertise is looking at that and bringing in these great products and focusing on it I just think is so so exciting and I know I can rely on you to to not lead me astray so I'm really really excited to have you here on board working uh you know arm and arm the feeling is mutual yeah it's it's great and so so you have also written some books would you mind talking a little bit about that sure um so uh my previous job I worked at was near a small publisher called story publishing um and their whole Focus um was sustainable subjects okay and so the books that they published they planned on always keeping in print and I think they're pretty close to actually doing that so um so they approach me because I had been teaching crochet classes for a long time and I was sort of the expert in the area like would you like to write a book and I was I I guess yeah you know like nobody unless you think you're going to grow up and write the you know Great American novel nobody thinks I'm going to grow up and write a book so I did I took um you know everything that i' learned from those years of teaching crochet and and my curriculum development uh Ree and and worked it into a great little pocket sized book where you can just get started crocheting and it really there's a little bit of humor in there so it's not really a dry textbook um but it's just it's got a a lot of great information in a little package you can take it with you keep it in your project bag how to crochet so cute learn the basic stitches and techniques I love that and so that that book did really well and they came back and said would you like to do something else and I said well sure and they said why don't you just do a pattern book and I said why don't I do a pattern book where I teach people how to design their own patterns yeah and so it's sort of an empowering thing there's I think 24 there's 24 actual projects in the book wow but every project also teaches you how to do your own thing that's so how to take the yarn that you want find a stitch that you like Swatch it and then turn it into a hat turn it into a cowl turn it into a pair of socks that's pretty incredible yeah yeah so if there was someone who was considering getting into this field for a career what kind of advice would you give to them find the part of it that shines the brightest for you and focus on that so if you really love sharing yarn with people or introducing them to new Yarns find a local yarn shop yeah start working there start teaching if design is really your thing just start yeah just start there's industry standards nobody writes to Industry standards when they start pick up patterns everywhere that you can read through them every designer has a different format that they put things in and you'll begin to pick up on what the standards are within those formats then you can format your pattern how best brings your voice forward but so that it's in a language that is sort of universal across patterns um if it's really just my hands don't stop and I constantly have to make but I don't want to have to write this down for anybody then just make and there's plenty of platforms out there where you can sell where you can sell your work yeah just find the thing that like be a magpie find the thing that's shiny draw you in get yes and follow it I love that yeah so I know you also enjoy gardening too so do you see any correlation between your knitting and your gardening and how meticulous or detail oriented you are about that uh yeah I think I'm I'm much Freer in the garden but I'm also not a su like I feel like knitting and crochet like I've got this like Soup To Nuts I'm good yeah gardening I'm still playing with my sister knows much more and so I lean on her pretty heavy I'm like what you know what companion planting should I be doing what should I have in this part of my garden because it's a little shady and she you know helps in to to be my expert and to help out so I'm a little more free form with the garden just I think I want flowers over there wouldn't it be nice to have pumpkins over here I hope they grow yeah and and I and I just go with it but I like I like being out there because knitting and crochets it's super portable and I can take it anywhere but I have my comfy spot you know like I have my spots where I like to work sometimes it's in the hammock in the backyard but mostly it's in my big comfy chair yes you know so the garden gets me out of the house it's fresh air I get to hear all the bird song I get a little bit of a sunburn because I've been out there that's okay you know it's just a a reminder you get a little dirt under your nails the the smells in the garden you know the tomato leaves you brush past a tomato leaf and just smell it and I just I don't know I just like seeing things grow yeah it's pretty amazing yeah I spent a lot of time with my grandma when I was a young girl she always had an incredible garden and it's one of the things that I wish I would have asked her more questions about because I do not have that skill I have a black thumb unfortunately but I I'm not convinced that that's forever it's just maybe it's just a time thing I'm hoping um and luckily my husband's quite good at growing things and so I get to enjoy a lot still but I I love being in the garden I I absolutely love it I think there's something healing about spending time outside doing work and connecting with nature and it also sort of recenters you and and your focus so I can totally relate to that and I was lucky enough that I spent a lot of time with my great grandmother and she and my great-grandfather had huge Gardens and so I got to spend time with them there and then with my nanny she wasn't so much of a gardener I mean there was always a little veggie plot and radishes Galore I love radishes I love them too but with her there was a little more foraging it was let's go pick mint from the front stone wall let's go pick some chives from the side of the house oh look we found a patch of uh you know lily of the valley do it just smell Beautiful so that's I think part of my love of the outdoors and the gardening I love that comes from all of that and then also cooking you know what are you going to do with all that stuff yes that's so true yeah so you mentioned that your family did gardening did any of them knit or crochet so there's a weird generation skip okay so all of the knitting and crochet and sewing in my family I learned from grandparents great grandparents okay I think there was you know a real push in my mom's generation for you know women's lib and and freedom from traditional you know women's roles so I I learned it from the generations before yeah um my great-grandmother that had the the great Garden she was a quilter she was a hand quilter um and I have a quilt that she made for me when I was born there's applique and it's all put together with sackcloth and you know pieces of their old clothes I need to see this I will I will bring a picture so um in 2020 when we were all under lockdown um my cousin had her first daughter and she had lost both of her parents and all four of her grandparents and you know we're all stuck at home and I just I was like we have to I talk to my sister I said we have to do something and so she my sister and I made a grandma quilt for her we we um there were there's butterflies and Sun Sun Bonnet Sue on mine um and my cousin and her fiance very into hunting so we did little um deer faces with antlers and butterflies CU they were having a little girl yeah and so we used um clothing I contacted her sister and I said Do you happen to have any of your mom and dad's clothes I contacted my aunts and said Do we have any of Nanny and gry's clothes so that I could cut from that fabric and and make one of those quilts for her yeah I think that's what's so incredible about Fiber Arts in general is that you can pass some of that love and history on in ways that is really unique yeah um and how special what a treasure what a treasure for you in getting to do it and then for for her and her her sweet little baby too yeah it was really great to work on that with my sister and sort of Channel our yeah her grandmother through that yeah yeah I love that I I feel very fortunate um because you hear the story of the skill skipping Generations often whether it's in knitting and crochet or quilting um my mom was always more of a crafter when I was young but didn't spend a ton of time at the sewing machine although she could sew um She's Come much farther back around to it now but I also learned from from my grandma um she's the one that spent so much time teaching me and um and spending time and and developing that love and I feel fortunate that I have many generations who have passed that skill and in in a way um it's the one thing in my life besides photographs that connects me to that history of my family isn't that crazy it's amazing it really is so do you have Treasures from your grandma and great grandma that have passed on I do I do so I have the the quilt that my great-grandmother made me I have all kinds of things from my nanny um my M taught me my mom's stepmom actually taught me how to knit and crochet um she used to watch me a lot when I was young and I was a pain in the butt yeah and she crocheted like crazy every everybody who had a baby in their Church got a layout set and a blanket from her go and so I was like what are you doing M what are you doing M what are you doing and so she finally just said fine I'll Teach You How yes and I think I was seven and then a couple years later she taught me how to knit but then I taught her how to do crossstitch I years later and then that became a huge passion of hers later in her life and she would do these huge pieces and when my husband and I got married she did a huge you know bride and groom piece for us that I have framed in our dining room so it's just it's not always just that it it comes straight down through sometimes it circles back around has it own path which is pretty incredible I love that I think it's such a unique thing to be able to celebrate and to to remember while we're working uh that that these things might be frustrating to us in the moment or part of our journey but down the road someone might really treasure them absolutely and there is really something to like all of that love and intention in every Stitch absolutely it really is there I I and people notice it they absolutely do and so that's super special and I I feel it in the things that I have from my grandma and great grandma I have some quilts from them and some dolls that my grandma made me and they're like some of my most prized possessions you know not only are they functional and beautiful but they are sweet memories yeah that are wrapped up in them so same same I love a piece that has a story that's super meaningful yeah I love that so much well thank you so much for being here today Sarah I truly appreciate it I love every time we get to chat and obviously people can find you at Missouri Star knitting and crochet but where else if they want to keep in touch with you occasionally I'll post to my Instagram it's chicken Betty uncore awesome yeah that's that's about it that's I'm there or I'm here perfect before I'm in the garden we we'll be tuning in for all the new tutorials yeah I'm looking forward to it awesome I'll see you next time thanks Misty