Founder · writes the Inspiration stories
I was born in Zonguldak on the Black Sea coast, the youngest of five sisters. University took me to Konya, where I met my husband Abdullah and where our first two boys were born. We moved to İstanbul in 2013, and our two younger sons arrived here.
I founded Meşgalem in 2018. For years I ran a workshop making gifts for engagements, births and family celebrations — and learned how a plain object changes the moment a name is written on it. Today Meşgalem makes name-personalised keepsakes for mothers and babies.
Before that I taught children’s play groups and trained as a chess coach. The Inspiration stories are mine: the pastimes my grandmother left me, the first weeks with a newborn, and the small handwork our hands keep returning to.
Sewing
Sewing classes in Dublin sell out months ahead, New York declares sewing “cool again”, and across Türkiye the old Singers are coming down from the attic. What’s behind the quiet comeback — and where does a new mother find room for it?
· 5 min read
Mother & Baby
Süleyman Taha, Muammer Esat, Hamza Bera, Mehmet Emde. We chose a name for four boys and learnt the same lesson each time: a name isn’t found on a list, it’s found by calling it out loud. On the quiet side of naming a baby — with a note on why Turkish children so often carry two names.
· 3 min read
Stone Painting
Five sisters growing up in Zonguldak always had pockets full of pebbles. Years later we paint those pebbles in İstanbul with four boys. Why stone painting has become so loved, how a stone the size of your palm turns into a keepsake, and how to begin at the kitchen table.
· 3 min read
Woodwork
The best smell of my childhood was the sawdust drifting out of the carpenter’s shop at the top of our street. Years later I found it again at our kitchen table in İstanbul, in the hands of four boys holding sandpaper for the first time. Why wood is the most patient craft of all.
· 3 min read
Plaster & Clay
When my third son was a week old we pressed his palm into a handful of plaster. That hand is bigger than mine now — but the print is still a week old. Why plaster and clay make such tender keepsakes, and how to start at home.
· 3 min read
Candles
Our first winter in İstanbul, with the boxes still unpacked, I lit a candle and the flat felt like ours for the first time. Why candle-making has moved into everyone’s kitchen, and what one small flame does to an evening.
· 3 min read
Customs & Traditions
A red ribbon on the door handle, a crimson sherbet for visitors, forty pebbles counted into a basin of water. In Anatolia a baby’s first forty days have always run on their own calendar. Where these customs come from, why families still keep them, and what a new mother — from here or elsewhere — can take from them.
· 4 min read
Knitting & Crochet
In hospital waiting rooms, on bus seats, in front of the evening news — women in Türkiye were always knitting something. Now the needles are back in young hands, and doctors are saying what grandmothers already knew: knitting calms you down.
· 4 min read
Embroidery
Every cloth in my grandmother’s dowry chest had two letters stitched into the corner, and they can still be read today. Why embroidery is back in twenty-somethings’ handbags, and why a baby’s name written with a needle lands so differently from one typed on a screen.
· 3 min read