Over on Mary Corbet’s Needle’n’Thread blog, Mary has been talking about “Grab and Go” projects this week – the projects you can pick up and take with you so that you always have some sewing to hand when a few spare minutes come your way.
My favourite “Grab and Go” at the moment is a paper piecing project I have been working on for quite a while. It was inspired by a friend from my patchwork group, who makes beautiful quilts in strips using the English paper piecing method. After drooling over her work for several months I decided to dive in and give it a go. I loved the idea of having a long term project that I could pick up and work on whenever I wanted – and I am making it for me so there is no deadline. This is relaxing sewing at its best!

I had done EPP before I started this project, but had never attempted something on a larger scale. The idea of this quilt is that you work each part of the quilt as a strip, join them all together, then finish with a series of borders. And there is no pattern – just choose a lovely collection of fabrics and start stitching. It just so happened (of course :)) that I had a lovely collection of fabrics in my stash that were perfect for this project – some old-fashioned florals, a few Japanese style florals, some small prints and a few solids thrown in for variety.
I started with rectangles and squares as my first strips. Each rectangle is 2″x4″ and each square is 2″x2″. Each strip is 22 pieces wide – 22×2″=44″.


Then I moved onto hexagons and pentagons. The pentagons will be appliquéd onto a cream background to create another strip.


I also plan to do some stitchery on the same cream ground fabric and intersperse these strips amongst the pieced strips. And after purchasing “Quilting On The Go!” by Jessica Alexandrakis recently (you can find Jessica’s fabulous blog here), I am inspired to add some diamonds and triangles in future strips.
This project is perfect for “Grab and Go”. I keep a little zip-lock bag in my handbag with just enough supplies to work on one strip at a time. And a larger box at home keeps the whole project in one place.

This project is growing organically – which I love. I don’t quite know how it will look when I am finished, but I will love it anyway because it has brought me so much pleasure in the making of it!
I only do “Grab and Go” projects! I’ve got the best little bag for tucking into my purse and taking it with me. Perfect for long days of trampolining and diving competitions!