My name is Kathy and I live in Oak Creek, Wisconsin with my husband, Jeff. We have three children, Jen, Bailee, and Brian. Jen lives with her husband in a house not too far away from us. Bailee is working full time and Brian is studying to be a civil engineer at UW-Milwaukee.
My family is involved in helping me make Humble Hearts successful. My husband, Jeff has excellent carpentry skills and he taught me all about the use of power tools. I started with a scroll saw and eventually added power sanders and drills, a band saw, and even a drill press. I now wonder how I ever accomplished anything without these wonderful tools! I draw all the patterns on wood and cut them out. Jeff runs them through his planer to make them smooth and he usually helps me with the sanding. I paint all the woodcrafts, sand them again, then apply stain and sealer.
My daughter, Bailee helps me with the folk art dolls. We wash the muslin, cut out all the doll patterns, stuff, and hand-stitch the body parts together. We make sure that they are all fully dressed, so we hand-stitch little undies for all the dolls. Then comes the fun part, picking out the wonderful fabrics to make the dresses for the dolls. We carefully match the fabrics and make the dresses. Adorning them with buttons, bows, and ribbons in their hair finishes them off nicely.
After many hours of patient instruction from my friend Jan, I finally got the hang of bow making and now I can finally make wreaths and floral arrangements without her help. Although I enjoy her company, I'm sure she's much happier making her own wreaths without having me bother her to make bows for me.
I've been sewing since the seventh grade, and my two daughters also picked up the love of sewing when they were very young. My eldest daughter, Jen graduated from UW-Stout with a degree in fashion design and has many awards including some from the Wisconsin State Fair for her beautiful clothing designs. My daughter Bailee has excellent sewing skills like her sister, but she loves quilting more than clothing. Bailee also has awards from the fair for her quilting skills. They set an example for me to follow so I entered some of my dolls in the fair too. I actually got ribbons on two of them! I was thrilled and today those award-winning dolls are my best sellers.