Tildy's Macramé Wall Art

I was looking for something I could pass to my daughter when she gets her first apartment. I never understood how much of the store stuff is machine-made until I held a Whitfield. The weight, the texture, the way the fringe falls — it is not in the same category.

Patrice’s five-leaf hangs over our bed and it’s the first thing I see every morning. The driftwood still smells faintly of cedar oil. My husband said it was too expensive — then he read the signature on the back and went quiet.

I hesitated to spend three times what I would at HomeGoods for what looked, from across the room, like the same thing. Eighteen months in, my green leaves still look like delivery day. The two HomeGoods pieces from that same spring are in a donation bag.

The Evil Eye was a gift for my niece’s first home. Geneva’s signature on the back made her cry. It hangs on the wall opposite her front door — exactly where her Turkish grandmother would have put one.

Earlene’s angel wings hang over my granddaughter’s crib. When I read that each pair takes her two days, I bought a second pair for my own bedroom. Some things you want twice in one lifetime.

I’m a textile designer. I have looked at thousands of macramé pieces in my career. The half-hitch ridge on the bottom edge is a technique I have never seen on anything mass-produced. It is real. There is nothing else like it in my apartment.

It arrived tissue-wrapped with a handwritten card from the porch crew. I sat at my kitchen table and touched every wooden bead before I hung it. You can feel the hours in the cord. I cried, and I am not a crier.

I was looking for something I could pass to my daughter when she gets her first apartment. I never understood how much of the store stuff is machine-made until I held a Whitfield. The weight, the texture, the way the fringe falls — it is not in the same category.

Patrice’s five-leaf hangs over our bed and it’s the first thing I see every morning. The driftwood still smells faintly of cedar oil. My husband said it was too expensive — then he read the signature on the back and went quiet.

I hesitated to spend three times what I would at HomeGoods for what looked, from across the room, like the same thing. Eighteen months in, my green leaves still look like delivery day. The two HomeGoods pieces from that same spring are in a donation bag.

The Evil Eye was a gift for my niece’s first home. Geneva’s signature on the back made her cry. It hangs on the wall opposite her front door — exactly where her Turkish grandmother would have put one.

Earlene’s angel wings hang over my granddaughter’s crib. When I read that each pair takes her two days, I bought a second pair for my own bedroom. Some things you want twice in one lifetime.

I’m a textile designer. I have looked at thousands of macramé pieces in my career. The half-hitch ridge on the bottom edge is a technique I have never seen on anything mass-produced. It is real. There is nothing else like it in my apartment.

It arrived tissue-wrapped with a handwritten card from the porch crew. I sat at my kitchen table and touched every wooden bead before I hung it. You can feel the hours in the cord. I cried, and I am not a crier.

I was looking for something I could pass to my daughter when she gets her first apartment. I never understood how much of the store stuff is machine-made until I held a Whitfield. The weight, the texture, the way the fringe falls — it is not in the same category.

Patrice’s five-leaf hangs over our bed and it’s the first thing I see every morning. The driftwood still smells faintly of cedar oil. My husband said it was too expensive — then he read the signature on the back and went quiet.

I hesitated to spend three times what I would at HomeGoods for what looked, from across the room, like the same thing. Eighteen months in, my green leaves still look like delivery day. The two HomeGoods pieces from that same spring are in a donation bag.

The Evil Eye was a gift for my niece’s first home. Geneva’s signature on the back made her cry. It hangs on the wall opposite her front door — exactly where her Turkish grandmother would have put one.

Earlene’s angel wings hang over my granddaughter’s crib. When I read that each pair takes her two days, I bought a second pair for my own bedroom. Some things you want twice in one lifetime.

I’m a textile designer. I have looked at thousands of macramé pieces in my career. The half-hitch ridge on the bottom edge is a technique I have never seen on anything mass-produced. It is real. There is nothing else like it in my apartment.

It arrived tissue-wrapped with a handwritten card from the porch crew. I sat at my kitchen table and touched every wooden bead before I hung it. You can feel the hours in the cord. I cried, and I am not a crier.

I was looking for something I could pass to my daughter when she gets her first apartment. I never understood how much of the store stuff is machine-made until I held a Whitfield. The weight, the texture, the way the fringe falls — it is not in the same category.

Patrice’s five-leaf hangs over our bed and it’s the first thing I see every morning. The driftwood still smells faintly of cedar oil. My husband said it was too expensive — then he read the signature on the back and went quiet.

I hesitated to spend three times what I would at HomeGoods for what looked, from across the room, like the same thing. Eighteen months in, my green leaves still look like delivery day. The two HomeGoods pieces from that same spring are in a donation bag.

The Evil Eye was a gift for my niece’s first home. Geneva’s signature on the back made her cry. It hangs on the wall opposite her front door — exactly where her Turkish grandmother would have put one.

Earlene’s angel wings hang over my granddaughter’s crib. When I read that each pair takes her two days, I bought a second pair for my own bedroom. Some things you want twice in one lifetime.

I’m a textile designer. I have looked at thousands of macramé pieces in my career. The half-hitch ridge on the bottom edge is a technique I have never seen on anything mass-produced. It is real. There is nothing else like it in my apartment.

It arrived tissue-wrapped with a handwritten card from the porch crew. I sat at my kitchen table and touched every wooden bead before I hung it. You can feel the hours in the cord. I cried, and I am not a crier.