Returning to our roots: how one handmade weekend became the heartbeat of Hemlock & Heather.

A few years ago, I started making small wooden candy corn out of leftover scraps from the shop. It wasn’t part of a plan or a new product launch. I just wanted to make something.

That’s always been the engine at the heart of Hemlock & Heather: creation for its own sake. The joy of shaping something real with your hands. The satisfaction of seeing an idea take form — not because it’ll sell, but because it meanssomething.

Before there were logos, followers, or retail displays, there was just a garage, a few borrowed tools, and a rainy weekend.

The Headboard and the Quilt

Around 2010, Kelley had a family quilt that was falling apart. It meant a lot to her, and she wondered if we could somehow preserve the pattern in wood. She left town to visit friends that weekend, and I decided to give it a try.

I spent two full days in the garage cutting, sanding, and experimenting with some reclaimed beaded oak that a remodeler had given me when I was still working in the building industry. By Sunday night, I had a headboard made up of ninety-six individual parallelograms — each one cut and placed by hand to recreate that star pattern from her quilt.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was alive. And it taught me something that still defines how we work today: design by discovery. Figure it out as you go. Let the process show you where to go next.

From the Garage to Today

That same spirit carried us forward. A year later, we made our first Texas wall hanging, and before long, our weekends in the garage had turned into a small business.

More than a decade later, Hemlock & Heather has evolved — we’ve built hundreds of pieces and tried just about everything. But the part that still feels most true is the simplest one: making something with our own hands.

So this fall, we’re going back to where it all began.

Handmade Is Back

I recently dropped off a small batch of these handmade candy corn sets at our Painted Tree booth. Each one is cut, sanded, and finished by hand — just like that first quilt-inspired headboard all those years ago.

If you’re in the Austin area and feeling the fall spirit, stop by and grab a set for your home. And if you do, know that you’re taking home a tiny piece of that same spark that started Hemlock & Heather in the first place.

We’ve come a long way since that rainy weekend. But the heart of it hasn’t changed.

📍 Find us at Painted Tree (Austin) — Handmade is back!