Sewing on the road

Al and I are on our way to my brother's farm in the U.P. of Michigan. They called us to say they needed help with the harvest...which means they've canned all they are able to and would like us to haul tomatoes and other stuff back home. I usually can tomatoes into sauce each year because my husband (being Italian) requests spagetti about once a week. We go through a LOT of sauce!

So yesterday I dug through my 30's for scraps to for the tumbling blocks quilt so that I could work on it as we travel.

I have quite a few 30's reproductions and originals, that I've collected over 20 years or so. I'm trying to use up all the small pieces in this quilt. And if I need some color that isn't a scrap, I'm cutting one. 

Having these papers cut and pinned to fabric makes basting so much quicker. I prepped about 25 of these diamonds then grabbed a stack of scraps so that I'm not bored in the evening up there.

We are on the road, I'm sewing, he's driving...both of us doing what we love best!

 

Current projects

This is my newest quilt start. It's long term ...a hand sewing ( #epp ) project. My last English paper piecing quilt top took 7 years to make and it's taking about 6 months to hand quilt then bind. This one will be faster since it wont be just worked on during car rides and doc appts. I'm doing some blocks each evening. I've hauled out my bin of 30s reproduction prints and vintage fabrics and am sorting in color order. Then I have daughter Jenn finding coordinating light/medium/dark sets for the blocks.

Also, in the evenings or early morning, I'm putting in a bit of time on that first EPP quilt, my 6-point diamond stars. It's getting to the end. This week I flipped the quilt frame around so that I can quilt the last few rows. It should be finished some time in April.