Come Stitch With Me

Meet my new travel companion!  This little 5 pound wonder is going with me on a plane  later this week. I’ll be gone for nearly a week with a fair amount of downtime built into my schedule. I won’t have a car and there’s not a lot to do in the evenings near the hotel unless you’re into the bar and band scene (which I am not).  So why not stitch? It’s amazing what you can get done in 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sewing time – if you plan/precut your projects ahead of time.  It’s like a mini sewing retreat.

I typically carry a hand embroidery project with me whenever I travel. Hand embroidery and reading are good for 1-2 nights. This is why I pack a machine whenever I travel by car and will be gone more than a couple of nights.  This time, my original plan was to pack a folding cutting mat, small ruler and rotary cutter in my suitcase. I would do all of the sub-cutting for an upcoming project (there’s a lot of it!).

Then, I met this little purple machine. It’s a 1/2 size sewing machine (think Janome Sew Mini). It uses REAL sewing machine feet, makes a nice straight stitch and can do buttonholes. I thought, why not give it a try on a simple quilt top I wanted to make from charm squares and 2-1/2″ strips?  My test using the 1/4″ foot was fine. You do have to use metal bobbins and a piecing thread like Mettler, Gutermann or Missouri Star for best results. Love me some Aurifil, but it’s too fine for this machine – thread breakage and skipped stitches happened frequently during my test. Switching to a smaller needle didn’t seem help either.

I don’t expect this little purple machine to replace my regular travel sewing machine, or to go with me on sewing retreats. However, it will be interesting to see if it is a viable option for machine stitching on the go when traveling by air is the chosen mode of transportation. If not, it’ll certainly look cute displayed on a shelf in my studio and will be perfect for my 5 year old neighbor as she learns to sew.

The exterior house painting is now complete!  Just like that, my summer “honey-do” list is complete!  It’s finally time to get crafty!

Extended time in my happy place is just what I need after an emotionally draining few weeks.  Too much staff turnover at the day job and too many loved ones passing away.  Funerals are not my thing. After two of them in the past month for both a close friend and a former colleague,  that’s enough of that for a while, thank you very much.

I have one t-shirt quilt left to complete and then it is sew time for me:

1. Duvet cover for master bedroom.
2. Assemble Lady of the Lake quilt top and send to longarm quilter.
3. Practice “ruler work” on unfinished quilt tops that have been hanging on the rack for a while.
4. Get back to Dog Park quilt that I meant to make for Boomer’s pet stylist, Miss Lorena.  On Friday, I learned she’d recently passed away.  For some reason, news of her passing really hit me hard. Now, I’m determined to get the quilt finished in time for the East Cobb Quilt Guild Show next year.  I will do this one entirely by myself – including the machine quilting.

This quote by Mary Anne Radmacher sums up my personal mantra exactly: