Quilting is an enjoyable hobby where most often, tools and fabrics are spread out in a spare bedroom or another area such as a dining room table. However, for quilters leading busy lifestyles, traveling to appointments and meetings, it may seem quilting is more for homebodies than working women who travel.
However, quilting isn’t just for stay-at-home moms and retirees. Workers, on the go, can quilt, too. They can bring along their quilting as they wait for appointments and at airports, just as knitters, crocheters, and stitchers can take their projects with them.
Piece Quilting
Piece quilting is for not only for quilters who aren’t home much to devote to their hobby, but also for those who’d rather work in small pieces rather than do an entire quilt. Quilter Carolyn Foster is a piece quilter and found enough enjoyment and success in this method that she wrote a book, sharing tips with others. Foster’s book, Quilting on the Go, explains how to break down pieces of a quilting project into small sections you can take with you wherever you go. Not only can you quilt on the go, but you can also piece as well.
Quilt As You Go
Foster’s “quilt as you go” concept explains the beauty of working individual quilting blocks rather than quilting on a huge quilting frame set up in a home. The idea is to quilt individual blocks and then join them together with other completed blocks. Just as “there’s nothing new under the sun,” Ms. Fosters points out this concept is not an original one but dates back to pioneer days, noting women who quilted back then didn’t have the luxury of a home to spread out their quilting supplies. Therefore, they quilted individual blocks in wagons while traveling out west with their frontier families. For this portable quilting method, you’ll need pieced blocks, not necessarily the same pattern. In fact, it’s even better to have individual patterns, she notes, as you can make a sampler.
Miniature Art Quilts
Miniature art quilts are excellent for portable quilting. For example, you can piece together fabric, making a landscape scene. Include batting and backing as you secure all three parts into a tight quilting hoop. Add quilting thread and needle in your quilting bag and you’re set up to quilt anywhere.
Tablecloth as a Design Board
On the other hand, you don’t have to wait until it’s time for the quilting process. You can bring along a bag of fabric to piece together. Regardless of the phase of your quilting, you can work on some stage of a quilting project on the go. Innovative quilter Sheila Toso doesn’t let traveling stop her from designing her quilts. Using a vinyl tablecloth as a design board, she lays out fabrics and then when she has to leave, she simply rolls up the design, on a tablecloth, with a protective sheet keeping the pieces in place.
Quilting Tots
If you still have a lot of quilting materials, then use quilting totes. Just as any luggage on wheels, quilting totes can roll through the airport, making it easy as compartments help organize tools and fabrics.
Remember the purpose isn’t to get a quilt done, but to provide a relaxing activity, to calm frazzles nerves because of a busy life. Bringing along your quilting on trips and appointments isn’t about multitasking. It’s about unwinding from stress. After all, isn’t quilting supposed to relax the quilter?
 |
