Following the Open Road

For the past two years, my friend and I have taken road trips that feed our creativity and inspire new sewing projects. We’ve traveled as far west as Missouri and as far north as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, returning to the East Coast with a car full of fabric, patterns, and ideas waiting to take shape.

We start each trip with a list of stops—some found on social media, others shared by fellow makers—but the best discoveries come from the people we meet along the way. Over time, we’ve built a list of favorite places to revisit and added a few new gems each trip.

Once we return home, the work becomes solitary: cutting, sewing, finishing. But the dreaming— imagining of how colors, shapes, and patterns might come together—is what inspires us as we make items for friends, family or even ourselves. It’s that creative spark, ignited on our stops along the road, that keeps us going through the sometimes tedious tasks of cutting and piecing.

Whatever our work or passions, we all need that kind of downtime—the space where free thinking and new ideas can find us, nudging us to keep creating, keep trying, and let our goals evolve as we move toward the finish line.  Where we begin is not always where we end. This is true in the car, on the road, and at the sewing machine.