Went on a road trip in June for a week. Visited my daughter, her husband, and his sister in DC. Oh. There was a dog, too.

Since we were driving, I wanted to take along a project for all those hours of being captive in the car. Hand-quilting the Norah quilt was my first thought but the car was FULL! (Taking things to their new house that I have stored at mine until they bought a place.) Not a space for a quilt even though it’s small! So I took along my chambray shirt that I’ve been embroidering for about 2 years. A little more every summer. Then I wear it when the weather is cool.

Here’s the latest update.

Need to fill in some more flowers and leaves around the fawn and then I’ll start adding stitches to the front of the shirt. I downloaded the fawn and the flowers on the left from DMC.com. Free!

When I got home I kind of got obsessed with finishing the quilting on the Norah quilt. My sewing machine was neglected!

And I finished the hand-quilting yesterday!

Yeah, I still need to trim it then add the binding. But I was really happy to get the “sew slow” finished!

Here’s my tools. See that little red circle? That came with the needles. It was a life-saver. I used it to pull the needle through almost every stitch.

I really enjoyed the whole hand-quilting process. Got into a rhythm. Liked looking at each strip and remembering what I had originally bought the fabric for.

Here’s the center..

I plan to get the binding on and hand-stitched this weekend. Then into the washer it goes. Very curious as to how the cotton batting shrinks up and what the quilt will look like! Hope I can show it to you next week!

And about my trip. I was worried about finding restrooms and places to eat. We also stayed in a hotel on the way up and back. Have to say that it was a lot better than I expected. The hotel was very clean and the rest areas were open. And then we crossed the Florida border!

We made it back home but I think this will be the last out-of-state road trip for awhile!