What Do You Do About Your Sewing Urges While Traveling?

Hmm...sounds slightly pornographic, doesn't it?  But Tanit-Isis describes it so well as "itchy fingers" that I really have to hand it to her.  Anyway, Mr D and I are leaving for vacation today and will be gone over a week. Usually I spend the time getting there by researching fabric shopping ahead of time (Mr D LOVES that-ha, ha) and the time coming home by making lists of upcoming projects.

While I enjoy looking at other sewers' storyboards and recaps of vacation wardrobes, I will only briefly describe mine here:  to me, it always starts with the coat or jacket.  That determines the rest, depending on other factors such as weather or type of trip.  This upcoming trip will be to Europe with a focus on cities and small towns.  I am wearing a gray wool coat, which will match with just about anything of course, along with sensible walking shoes and knit skirts/tops.  We do not wear jeans and sneakers in Europe to avoid looking like tourists, although we find that more and more Europeans are doing just that, for comfort I suppose.

I debated about pants versus skirts for the long plane ride and decided on a gray knit skirt and tights.  I really do not like starting the day in the city with wrinkled, rumply pants that have been obviously slept in. Although it's impossible to look fresh as a daisy, I try and at least look somewhat alert.

I will show my latest little travel bags made from a downloadable pattern from Fabric.com.

The first is the jewelry roll (sorry for the unedited photos here).  I used some home dec for the maroon part and the base was made from a cute little travel print which I had originally bought to make my grandson some overalls when he was a baby.  Daughter T didn't approve of that plan so it gets a new life.  The case opened is really symmetrical and not distorted as you might think--it's just a quick lousy photo. It's bound with some packaged binding that I had on hand.  This is a quick pattern and I have used it, but the next time I would make the pockets divided more OR use clear vinyl instead.

Next is the travel case.  There are two sizes and I chose to make the smaller one, again just as an experiment.  It's really small though.  I used a zip from my stash that had a ring on it; this is very helpful when opening and closing the case.

Here's a picture of it inside-out and I am not happy with the fact that the instructions called for no finishing of inside edges.  I pinked them but it's kinda sloppy, I think.  However, the lining fabric was of special significance for me because it came from my grandmother's scrap bag and is probably from the 1940's or 1950's.  It gives me a little connection to home when traveling. I'll be using this case for the time being but I have similar patterns to try in the future with better finishing techniques.

So we'll be away for a while but when I come back I'll be having a few give-aways--very nice quality fabric from EOS and Christine Jonson, as well as a few Burda magazines.  Hopefully it will give me some feedback since I haven't had any comments on posts yet.  Speaking of which, I've been doing more commenting myself lately on other peoples' blogs, just to get more in the habit.

A bientot!