Cindy is a writer by trade. But she has always found solace in working with her hands. When seven years old, her Auntie Marie taught her how to pick up a crochet hook and do the simple chain stitch. She chain stitched miles. As a young Girl Scout, she was again encouraged to work with her hands making all those fun crafts in the 1960s. She felt that as a young child if she were ever bored or lonely, she could always create with her hands, occupy her mind and find peace.

''The women I knew and admired as a child all sewed,’’ she recalled. Her Aunt Lil was a jovial woman who always had sewing on the machine, sewn dolls and other projects to show and a big plate of homemade brownies on the table when she arrived for a visit. While playing at a friend’s house, she would occasionally walk through the well-kept livingroom and gaze at a huge, intricately embroidered crewel work canvas. A Hungarian woman up the street did alterations and kept a fascinating round rack of hand sewn clothing for sale that she would admire.

''I had a fabulous home economics teacher, Mrs. Meyers, who was extremely strict. She made us keep meticulous sewing notebooks documenting every kind of buttonhole and seam. At the time, I couldn’t imagine how grateful I would be for that someday,’’ Cindy recalls.

As a junior high school student, she received her first sewing machine – a Morse that sewed forward and backwards. When her chores were done, she could go to her basement sewing room and create and sew outfits as long as she liked. Polyester had just come into fashion. She and The Morse produced many high-waisted plaid pants and coordinating blazers. As she sat on the floor laying out her patterns, her Airedale, Tootse, would lay with his head on her lap. ''He was a great sewing buddy and he never walked on the patterns.’’

College found her embroidering her blue jeans and peasant tops madly. She had a hippie friend that made the warmest blue jean quilts backed with red flannel and who also let Cindy sew on her machine.

After college, Cindy plunged into journalism. As a police reporter, the violence that she was forced to witness on a day to day basis was shocking to her. ''I’d run home to my sewing machine and only think about that needle going in and out of the fabric. It grounded me and brought me peace."

With the birth of her first child and the desire to be a home Mom, Cindy began freelance writing. Like a light bulb turning on, she thought, since I love sewing so much what am I doing writing about sewer assessments, politics and death. She wrote her first sewing article. ''Or rather, it wrote itself,’’ she says.

Her motto, ''Follow your heart, and you’ll find the work you love. And you’ll be one of those people that love what they do. That’s a good way to spend your life.

''Looking back on how sewing touched my childhood, I feel we must pass on our traditions of creating with our hands to our children. Any chance you get, teach a child the love of sewing.’’

Today, Cindy enjoys teaching her three-dimensional flower making techniques and meeting stitchers from everywhere. For her and others, stitching can be a mystical experience.