Friday, June 28, 2013

Sewing on the Go!

I am on vacation, currently in San Diego. DH is attending a scooter rally, Amerivespa, and I have been sewing in our hotel room. Things started out fairly contained.


Our hotel room has a kitchen in it, thus we have a dining table. I set my folding table from home up in between the dresser and dining table, so I could have my quilt pieces nearby.This is when I first set things up, and I had my bin of quilt pieces on the dresser, and the pile of squares I needed to draw lines on, my laptop computer, and a couple other projects on the back of the table. My sewing machine and light were set up. I am so glad for the light. What is it about hotel lighting that is so bad?


Here is a good look at my bin with quilt pieces in it, Pieces for the Pineapple Blossom quilts I am making, as well as a bunch of 2" squares I brought "just in case".


I wasn't too far in to making Pineapple Blossom blocks, before I decided I would do best sorting my strips by color. I am using everything in these blocks, and I wanted the colors in the blocks pretty balanced. It took two or three hours, but I sorted all my pieces by color, including my 2" squares while I was at it.


 Here are 8 Pineapple Blossom blocks done. I made nine before I opted to stop working on them. At home I usually sew on machines that are in cabinets. I rarely pin anything, but everything is lying flat when it goes in the machine. Since I'm sewing on a portable machine, the blocks are coming up over the edge, and I was having a hard time getting the corners to stay straight while I sewed them on. If I had brought pins, I would have been fine, and I could have pinned the corners and sewn away. Since I rarely pin, guess who didn't bring any? Stuff like this is why I always bring multiple projects. I put the Pineapple Blossom pieces away, with the exception of the squares I need to draw diagonal lines on, and now I'm working with those 2" squares.


I started piecing nine patches from my squares. I think this is a good beginning to a baby quilt!


These are some happy accident blocks. When I was cutting the strip sets for the Twice broken dishes quilt I am making, sometimes the strip sets had too little left for another cut with the Companion Angle, but they had too much left to toss. I used my Easy Angle ruler and got another cut. I have to unsew them top and bottom, but then I can sew them into HST's and I can make these pinwheel-esque blocks. Three of these spin one direction, five the other, but I think if I use sashing I could set them together. I have more pieces to unsew, (which I'll do in the car on our vacation), then I can make more of these blocks. This is really an extra quilt out of the leftovers of another. I have no idea what size it will end up, I haven't counted the extra pieces I have.


Now that I'm working with the two inch squares, things are more contained again, not quite so spread out. I just took a break and lounged in the recliner chair and drew lines on a bunch of squares. This hotel room is pretty sweet!

1 comment:

cityquilter grace said...

love your pineapple blossom; i did mine with scrappy batiks and your setup looks ideal!