Road Crafts

I'm getting ready to leave on a road trip - it will be about 18 hours in the car EACH WAY plus a few nights in hotels.   Hubby does most of the driving, and the Munchkin keeps himself pretty entertained with videos in the back seat (highway games only get us so far...) so to keep myself from sleeping most of the way, I bring small projects to work on.

We are in a smaller vehicle this time - in the minivan bringing a quilt to bind was not a problem - as I had plenty of room.  We are now in a RAV4 - so the working space is a little narrower (not to mention I don't have any quilts at the binding stage at the moment) - and the cargo space is a bit smaller - so this is what I have packed so far:

1.  my neverending knitting project (shawl/scarf) - I can only work on this in spurts before I have to put it down, but I think I will be able to make a big dent in it over the course of the trip.  Hoping to at least finish the first skein and get to the halfway point.

2.  some felt Christmas ornaments.  I started these 2 years ago for a Christmas in July - and that whole month got turned upside down, so they got put aside and have gone untouched until I dug them out this morning.  I think I will finish them up, gift some, and put the rest in the members boutique at our quilt show this summer.  All I am doing is stitching the two halves together with embroidery floss- running stitch - so these won't last me long as a project.  The embellishments will have to wait until after we get home -I think that would be challenging to juggle on my lap.

3.  sock monkeys - I have two to finish up that I need to do on the way, as they will be staying at our destination.  These may be done before we leave - but if not they should assemble quickly en route.

4.  hexies - I am jumping on the hexie bandwagon - I like the little ones, so have 100 3/4" templates and a bag full of 2" squares ready to go (Wonderland scraps, of course!!!)

5. any other ideas????  I do have some other wool/felt ornaments in a kit that I picked up but never started - they require some cutting and prep work ahead of departure - so not sure if I will have them ready for the trip.

Was it Friday?

A few posts back, I said I would be participating in the Friday Night Sew In last night. And I did - albeit in a small way.

Thursday I was able to get my latest quilt to the binding stage. I even brought it to work yesterday and started on the binding there. I got a bit of a late start after enjoying Peter and the Wolf on CD (narrated by Patrick Stewart) with the Munchkin and then getting him all tucked in to bed. And then I continued binding until my eyes cried "uncle" and I had to stop for the night.

No pictures... yet. I am hoping the sunny weather (sunny but cold) holds out through tomorrow so I can hang it on the clothes line for a good shot.

Today was a Target/Post Office/Library run and now we are settling in with out new books and videos and hopefully a bit more binding time.

Alterations

One of the advantages (or drawbacks?) to being the youngest of 6 kids was lots of hand-me-down clothing. Being somewhat of a tom-boy during high school, that included grabbing whatever I could from not only my older sisters, but my brothers as well (loved his hand-me-down boy scout pants - wore those a lot!!!)

Of course being short with an over 6 foot tall brother - this also entailed learning at a young age how to hem a bit here, take a tuck there, and generally make clothes fit the way I wanted them to.

So when I found a few pairs of pants early this spring on a clearance rack for $1.99 each that fit nicely in the hips but were either too long in length or a bit wide in the waist, I did not hesitate a bit in snatching them up - knowing I could make them comfy with just a few stitches here and there.

Of course then procrastination and distraction set in - and it was not until we hit a few days of very very hot weather and I was looking for some hand-sewing to do that I remembered the bag of alterations that needed to be done. And just my luck -two pairs of the pants were for summer - oh well, now I will have them for next year.

Another to-do off my list. Now to find some more projects - it's hot again today.

The Fruits of Someone Else's Labors

My recent foray into the world of yo-yo making has me peering through my bins of scraps, looking for those odds and ends of fabric that are big enough for a jumbo yo-yo (about 5" squareish scraps will do) - but yet not fabrics that I have earmarked for other projects.

This has proven to be tougher than I thought - especially since I have my eye on some scrappy quilt projects this spring.

And then I remembered my stash of circles.

When Lazy Sister Sue finished the quilt she made Hubby and I as a wedding gift (1994), she gave me the leftover scraps. Rectangles, small squares, a few larger pieces.

And lots and lots and lots of circles. 5" ish circles. Perfect potential yo-yo circles. Circles that create a lot of waste if I trimmed them into squares for piecing.

Did I mention that there were a lot of these???

The rectangles and other scraps are pretty much gone - incorporated into a wedding quilt for my nephew (Lazy Sister Sue's son). This is all that is left - and I have been carrying them around in my stash for years.

So now I have been making them into yo-yo's.

They match my quilt - so maybe they will become a pillow.
Or maybe something else.
I am not sure yet - but it has been fun to play with the yo-yo maker and have all these ready cut circles just waiting.

Thanks for the prep work, sis!!!

Yo baby

As long as I have been quilting and sewing, I never made a yo-yo.

I don't know if it was the hand sewing that intimidated me, or the fact that I had no idea what I would do with one if I made it.

Then someone gave me one of these.
And I saw these.
And these.

And I decided it was time.

So I rifled through my scraps and my stash, broke out my Clover yo-yo maker, sat down in front of a good movie, and started making yo-yo's.

That was less than a week ago.

At last count I was near 30.