Really, I could never sew for a living.
I realized yesterday, as I was happily stitching along on a project for my cousin's birthday, that my best sewing comes when I'm inspired by who the gift is for. The reason I say I couldn't sew for a living is because part of my realization yesterday was that my best work happens when I'm sewing with a specific person in mind. Yesterday it was my four year-old cousin. (yes, you get cousins younger than your own children when your father comes from a family of fifteen) He's a soft-spoken, chubby-handed little boy in gold, wire-framed glasses who knows more about tractors than most grown men. He'll drool over glossy Case IH literature like some kids drool over chocolate frosted cake.
So in the final hours before his party (and in the final minutes trying to take three pictures by ugly overhead light), I became inspired to make him a tractor to lay his head on, to usher him off into his own, personal, machinery dreamland. And I tell you the project couldn't have gone more smoothly. Each piece of fabric fell into place--the colors, the prints. Not a stitch (well maybe one or two) fell out of line. It just came together perfectly. And not because I think I'm the end all of pillow-makers, but because I think that when I'm sewing from my heart everything falls perfectly in to place.
