Once upon a time, at a kitchen table, there was a pile of old net curtains and fabric scraps, and daughters who wanted nothing more than to be queens for an afternoon. I stitched the scraps into dresses and then into the first of the crowns, and the other children who saw them wanted one too.
That was the beginning of Fable Heart, and it has been more than a decade since. The crown, first made in 2012, was made in its thousands, in many fabrics, and sold all over the world, each one made to be kept and handed down from one child to the next. We had a little shop of our own for a while, with storytimes and craft afternoons; and when the time came I closed its doors, because Fable Heart had more in it than a shop could hold.
It has become something larger than the crown it began with. Fable Heart is here for mothering done gently; for the slow days, the small rituals, the things written down so they are never lost; for letting in as much magic as a childhood can hold. The magic is real. We are only its keepers.
None of it would look as it does without Danii. She is the illustrator and designer behind Fable Heart, and her drawings and her eye for a page have given every card and pattern the look you see here; we have made it together for more than two years.
I am a mother of four daughters, and they are the reason I began and the reason I kept going. Alongside Fable Heart, I write Quiet Magic, a journal on the enchantment of childhood, and on keeping hold of it when life does not go to plan. It is where our seasonal letters live, and where the free seasonal activity poster arrives when you join.