Rally Sewing

 DH will be heading up a scooter rally very soon. Sometimes his scooter rallies for his club require great efforts from our whole family, and other times he takes the rally on the road and I don't have to do anything, or at least not as much. This year the rally is going on the road, and originally, I didn't have to do anything for it. The funny thing is, that even with no real advertising or anything, the rally has become much larger than he was thinking it would be, and we have several verified riders from other states and even from across the country. With so many out-of-towners coming, he really wanted to do something more than what he had originally planned. With all of our travelling, we were under a time crunch, so we were a bit limited in what we could do. I normally make rally bags for the scooterists, and we get sponsors to donate things to put in them. DH knew we didn't have time to get sponsors and such, but he did ask if maybe I could make smaller than normal rally bags. 

I had a couple different license plate fabrics in stash, and cut those up for the cause. All of that single fold bias tape I had sewed up while making luggage tags earlier this year made great drawstrings! 

I am always keeping an eye out for fast and easy things to sew, to use for gifts or giveaways for DH's business. I found a tutorial for making lip balm holders, and I knew they'd be quick to sew up. I had purchased the clips before our last trip, and the lobster clips are the only thing I needed that I don't normally have in stash. If you are looking for stocking stuffers and have some extra jelly roll strips lying around, this might be something you want to try making. 

These were very quick to sew, and for the loop to attach the clip, I used the sewn up bias tape scraps again! I used scooter fabrics for the rally, but just an FYI, you end up folding the fabric, so not only do you need a small scale print, but you need to use caution if it's directional. We bought blank lip balms on Amazon, and he made labels with the graphic for the rally on it. It's the same graphic as the t-shirts. I had four different fabrics I used for the lip balm holders, so just like with the rally bags, not everyone will get the same thing. 

Now that the rally sewing is done, and I'm partially finished with the Christmas sewing, I'm taking a break from that and assembling some of the queen/king quilts. I baste the giant quilts on two eight foot long folding tables which completely takes over the living room. If I can do that while DH is out of town, then he isn't inconvenienced by the mess. He wouldn't complain if I did it while he was home, but to even put the tables up I have to move all the furniture, and you can't see the TV, and...it's just a lot. If I can do it when he's out of town, at least I'm only inconveniencing myself, but basting on the big tables is easier, so it's only sort of inconvenient for me. I have four queen/king quilt tops ready to baste now, but there's one more I'd really like to get basted and I haven't even started assembling it (blocks are done). I also have two more big ones that only need borders sewn on, and another that has blocks that need to be sewn together, but will get no borders. 

I just finished quilting a quilt this morning (it's a Christmas gift), so all of my basting pins are free. I don't know how many big quilts I can baste, but I know I've done three queen/kings at once before, and I'm sure I had some pins left. My goal is to baste until I'm out of pins. I've got a whole closet full of quilt tops, so when I know I don't have enough pins to baste another big one I'll switch to something smaller. Three of the big quilts are my top priority, two others I'd like to get done soon-ish. The other big quilts can wait, and none of what's hanging in the closet is a priority. Actually, my next deadline quilt is a baby quilt that I've barely started. As soon as I've got these big quilts assembled, that baby quilt will be my sewing priority, maybe mixed in with some Christmas projects. By the time I get the baby quilt top done, I should have reclaimed enough basting pins to baste it! FMQ one hour per day may not seem like much, but it does keep things moving along.