Picture of the day - May 13, 2005

Mom's Hand-Crafted Pin Cushion

Today's picture features one of my mom's hand-crafted pin cushions. She carefully measures and cuts out the pieces, then sews them together with love, creating special gifts for the people she loves. She equips every pin cushion she makes with all the tools of the trade that a seamstress will need to sew by hand: spools of thread in various colors, folding scissors, straight pins, a thimble, a needle threader, and of course several needles in various sizes. When mom does something she does it right! Mom has always had a knack for making all types of craft items. Her imagination is exceeded only by her endless enthusiasm for making things. But without question, her specialty is sewing, a skill she developed out of necessity as a young girl growing up in a large and loving, but poor family. And then she and dad had eight kids of their own to raise on a very limited budget. The only resource that mom ever had plenty of was love, but she learned early on in life to make do with what she had to work with. Growing up, our clothes were handed down time and again, and when they became frayed or developed a hole she would mend them, often several times. We didn't get a lot of new clothes, but mom made sure the clothes we did have looked as new as possible! When a shirt or pair of jeans finally reached the point where it simply couldn't be repaired again without looking bad, mom cut out the "good" pieces of cloth and saved them up to use in one of her magnificent hand-made quilts. She has probably made well over 1,000 quilts in her lifetime, and she is still making them today even though she is nearing 80 years of age. Everyone wants one of mom's quilts, and she is always happy to oblige. As you can see, mom's hand-made pin cushions are more than just something she throws together to pass on as inexpensive gifts. Like her precious quilts, they are quite literally a piece of her life... a special token of her love for the art of sewing and the intense desire to pass that love on to everyone who will accept it.   Picture Of The Day Homepage Interesting Articles