No Burn Out?

Gaylen asked in a comment yesterday how I could do all this volunteer sewing and not lose the enjoyment of sewing. I've thought about the question and I suppose the real answer is...I don't know! But I do know that I do a couple of things that might help...

1) I catagorize my sewing...that way, the sewing I'm doing for church or whatever doesn't even seem like the same kind of sewing I do for myself. I almost even subdivide my personal sewing catagory...'fun' and 'necessary'. The 'fun' are those patterns and fabrics that I got because I loved the style/color/whatever and it's a treat to get to put those together. The 'necessary' sewing are wardrobe basics -- and, I suppose, choir clothes -- that I make because I need them and I can't find them to fit (me or my budget) in RTW. It's faster to grab something from the stash and sew it up from a TNT pattern than it is to go to the mall and start hunting through the stores to find something anyway, even if it doesn't exactly set my creative spirit humming to make ANOTHER Cowl Top or Oxford pants....

2) I stay exposed to other sewing enthusiasts via the Internet. It's hugely encouraging and inspiring to see what other folks are doing with their time and talent, and others will never know how many times I've gone online in a discouraged state only to find someone had left a comment on an old review that was just what I needed to get myself picked up and brushed off and back into a creative, productive frame of mind.

Having said that, though, I have so far pretty much avoided sewing for hire. It may come, eventually, that sewing will be an income producer, but there's so much involved in doing a real sewing business that I think the business end of it...inventory, billing, tax records, etc, would really take the enjoyment out of it.

But the bottom line is...I really enjoy the process of making things. And I especially enjoy the look on someone's face when I give them a costume that is right ;)