We just got back from a quiet little get away in the RV my dad blessed us with several years ago. It’s so nice to just pack it up and drive to the nearest state park. We nestle in and watch lots of movies. Each day we come up for air long enough to go for a walk. We drive into town to download email at a local hotspot, and we make sure we eat a nice dinner. Oh, and ice cream…did I forget to mention ice cream? That is a priority because we don’t follow our diet too closely for those couple days.
I brought along my sewing machine and the improvisational Cherrywood Fabrics quilt that I was working on a few weeks ago. I wanted to try to quilt it while we were away, but I only got about half way so far. It’s funny. Usually when I do machine quilting, I use many different colors of thread because I’m quilting a portrait or some other realistic imagery. Because I’m constantly changing colors, I never run out of thread. This time, I was going to do the entire quilt with just one thread. Imagine my surprise when I ran out of the thread on the spool after only quilting 41 of the 99 squares! They’re only about 7.5″ square. I imagined that 500 yards would go much further. It never even occurred to me to bring more than one spool! So, on to Plan B: I’m continuing with a similar thread. I hope to finish in time for DD#2’s birthday 🙂
We did get out of the RV for a few walks. On our first mini hike, we walked through a huge patch of yellow wildflowers. Sorry, I’m awful at knowing the correct names, so feel free to identify them for me. It was just fun to be surrounded on all sides by them, and beyond the patch the trees of the forest towered over us. On the second day we came across a large field of pink, purple, yellow, orange and white flowers. Again, I don’t know the name, but the bees absolutely loved them! And we saw several fawns. That’s always exciting for us city-slickers.
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5 responses to “Quiet get away”
Love this newest quilt! And I enjoyed your other little pics too. The flowers are beautiful! We may have to head over for a hike ourselves soon…
Beautiful quilt! What kind of machine do you tote in the RV and quilt with? RV’s seem too small to move around in more or less quilt in. I’m amazed!
I was just using my Janome 6500 on the RV’s table. It was a little squished, but do-able. I just heaped up the quilt in gathers all around the machine. Then I had to do some troubleshooting to put my body at an acceptable height. I ended up putting a little stool on the bench seat to lift myself up higher. (Should have taken a picture of that!) Not the most comfortable. Definitely wouldn’t want to sew like that on an extended basis! But now I’m back at home and can hopefully finish up today and tomorrow.
Maria, those purplish flowers are called cosmos. I can’t figure out the yellow flower. The leaves should be a give away but still could not figure out.
Is that quilt pieced and you had those stripes fabric for inserts. I am planning to use your idea and will be using embroidery across each square. What a great inspiration..
thank you.
For the skinny strips, I did use striped fabric that I cut so the stripes go horizontal. You can see the striped fabrics in this post (http://mariaelkins.com/index.php/2011/07/improvisational-piecing-skinny-strips-tutorial/) in the upper left corner of the first picture. All of the striped fabrics are pieced into the center portions of the squares.
Some of my squares were a bit too narrow, so I did piece together some scraps that were 1″-2″ wide and then I cut those into strips that were added onto the sides of the too narrow blocks. Those are what might look like wider striped fabric.
Hope that make sense!