Hand Quilting On The Road

MisterStitches and I recently took a road trip to Ashland, Oregon to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  It is a full day of driving, mostly straight highways.  So I took along a project to keep my hands busy.

I wanted to do some hand quilting, so I found some light blue fabric at my LQS, The Loft.  After washing and ironing, I sandwiched it with some backing fabric that I had in my stash.  I decided to hand quilt around the edges of the leaves on the fabric.  

I chose this cute variegated thread that I already had on hand for the quilting.

I really enjoy hand quilting.  It is so relaxing and peaceful to me.  (Except when I poke myself with the needle!)

 This is the backing fabric that I chose.  The stitches hardly show on it.

And of course, I used my trusty portable sewing station that I could attach to the car window.  It is so handy!

Sewing with GranddaughterStitches

We recently had a visit from eight-year-old GranddaughterStitches, who came to attend Art Camp at GAC.  This is her third year at the camp, and she loves it.  

She looks so serious, doesn't she!

As you can imagine, I am very interested in teaching GranddaughterStitches how to sew/quilt. In previous years, I have taught her how to hand sew; she loved cutting (fussy cutting) pieces of print fabric, then sewing them onto another piece of fabric.  Last year I gave her 40 5-inch squares and had her arrange them on my design wall.  I then sewed them together for her.  She helped me pin the quilt sandwich, and instructed me in what design to use for the quilting.  She was very proud of her doll quilt.

This year I found a book at Marva’s “The Loft” called Sewing Machine Fun for Kids by Lynda Milligan and Nancy Smith.  It is a great book for guiding a young quilter/sewer.  It had puzzles that helped GranddaughterStitches learn the names of different parts of the sewing machine.  That made it more fun for her.  It also had sample projects, and she chose to make a hair scrunchie.  After that she decided she wanted to sew a pillowcase, even though that wasn’t one of the projects in the book.  And I have to say, she did a pretty good job of it. 

The pillowcase.  I love the fabric that she chose from my stash.

The scrunchy.

I’m so happy to see this new generation interested in sewing and quilting.  It warms my heart.