Hand Sewing Projects to Take on Road Trips
I just got back from the BEST trip with my husband to the Outer Banks to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Since we were driving 6 hours and planned to have some restful down time while we were there, on the morning we left I woke up wondering if there was a portable hand sewing project I could take on our trip with me. I normally take a crochet or knitting project, but hadn’t even thought about it so I didn’t have one in mind, and those are more winter hobbies for me anyway.
I knew there had to be some travel friendly hand sewing projects that I could take to work on while traveling. I needed one that wouldn’t require much prep since we were leaving in just a few hours, so I googled some ideas and landed on one that was easy enough to take in just one shoe box sized bin.
So today I’m going to share with you some tips for sewing while traveling, ideas for small projects to bring, and how my own road trip hand sewing project turned out!
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Sewing While Traveling: 5 Hand Sewing Project Ideas
Crazy Quilting by Hand
I’ll start with the one I picked, which is crazy quilting! Crazy quilting doesn’t require any precutting, which is why it was perfect for me, since I only thought about it last minute. I did take a few minutes that morning to watch this excellent video, since I had surprisingly never done crazy quilting before. The video was very helpful and I was so excited to get started while on our drive.
Crazy quilting was very popular in the 90s. My mom made a few large quilts with this technique and I’m pretty sure my sister crazy quilted the most beautiful Christmas stockings for herself and her new husband in the late 90s. They had red velvet, cotton lace and other Victorian looking fabrics.
Using the tips from the video, I made three blocks during the time we were gone. You can get pretty fancy with crazy quilting, adding lace, machine or hand embroidery, and even metal charms or wooden buttons. It was so relaxing to sit and hand sew a block here and there.
Incidentally, at a used bookstore we visited on our trip, I found this crazy quilting book! I paid 50 cents for it and it has some great blocks. They’re more suitable for foundation paper piecing by machine, so it will be fun to play with in the future.
I’ll probably turn my three crazy quilted blocks into mug rugs or pot holders to give as gifts this Christmas.
English Paper Piecing
This is probably what I would have taken on my trip if I’d thought of it enough in advance. Unlike crazy quilting, which uses scraps and doesn’t need any prep, English paper piecing definitely requires some forethought. I’ve done plenty of foundation paper piecing by machine, but never this hand sewn paper piecing technique. I always get goggly eyed over peoples’ creations, though, they make such beautiful things!
Hexagons are a pretty traditional English paper piecing motif. It’s almost impossible to sew their corners together by machine, making it perfect for hand stitches. You can save a ton of time by purchasing a stack of already cut hexagon papers. If you decide to trace and cut them yourself, though, you can also buy a sturdy template.
To travel with this project, you need to preplan and cut out your parchment paper and fabric pieces before you go. I would do the basting step also. Then you can just spend your relaxation time hand stitching away, watching a satisfying pattern emerge!
You can make this as simple or as complicated as you want. You could just make a bunch of hexies and stitch them together at will. OR, here are some beautiful English paper piecing projects you can prepare in advance take on the road with you:
Butterfly Effect (On my wish list!)
Yo Yos
My mom taught me to hand sew yo yos when I was a preteen. I made a bunch of them and sewed them together into a table mat. I was super over it by the time I was done and found it too tedious to break the thread after tacking each edge together, so I just carried the thread over to the next edge. This left the back of my yo yo table mat with threads criss crossing all over it, haha! My mom thought it was pretty funny though and when I asked her years later why she still kept it, she said because it gave her a chuckle.
I don’t have a picture of the one I made (totally wish I did), but yo yos look like this:
These are very simple to sew. You only need to precut circles and you’re set to take them on road. They don’t take much brain power either, so you can pretty much zone out while sewing them if that’s your thing. Here is a great tutorial for sewing yo yos.
Hand Sew a Garment
Okay, hear me out! Recently someone I follow on Instagram posted that she sewed a shirt while on vacation and she sewed it by hand! She used a simple pattern that she already knew fit her well, cut her pieces before she left, and stitched the entire thing by hand. Her fabric was linen, so the beautiful texture of the fabric with that lovely look of hand stitches combined into an incredible, wearable work of art. And now when she wears that top, she’ll have the special vacation memories to go with it.
If you do hand sew a garment while traveling, linen is a great way to go, since wrinkles are part of its charm and you won’t need to worry too much about that. It finger presses well, which will help and it doesn’t ravel easily like some fabrics do.
Ornaments
You all know I love to sew Christmas ornaments! Many of the ornaments I’ve made in the past have required quite a bit of hand sewing and since I usually make a large batch of them to gift every year, I pile them in a bin to take everywhere with me so I can work on the hand sewing parts on the go. With proper planning, ornaments would be the perfect hand project.
Here are some hand sewn ornament patterns I recommend:
Anything by Mmmcrafts is so, so beautiful! I’ve admired her designs for years.
Blue Footed Boobie. I’m dying. So cute and funny!
Hand sewing supplies to bring with you on the road
I determined only to bring one small bin of supplies with me. Here’s what I brought:
Fabric Scraps. I tried to pick similar color ways when I was tossing them in the bin, but didn’t think too hard about it.
Quickly torn white cotton squares for my block bases. This was the only thing I prepped in advance and I did not need to measure them.
Scissors, large and small
My needle book
One spool of thread
My 10” square quilting ruler (I could have gotten along fine without this though, and just used the plastic bin’s lid for a hard surface).
And one thing I didn’t bring, but should have: my seam roller. I finger pressed the seams, but the seam roller was small enough to bring and would have done a better job.
Of course, your project would require different things, but I wanted to show you that you don’t need a ton of stuff or a large container to bring a hand sewing project on a trip with you!
More ideas for projects on the go
Embroidery is a great small project, though might be harder to do in the car if you’re a perfectionist about your stitches. In that case, consider the next idea …
Shashiko embroidery. With its big stitches and imperfect nature, this is a fun and easy project that you can use to embellish your jeans or make an entire blanket!
Finish a quilt. How many quilters have finished tops in their sewing closet just waiting to be either quilted or bound? Consider hand quilting while on vacation. I hand quilted a quilt for my daughter many years ago and it will always be one of my most special ones because of it. Or, slap a binding on an almost finished quilt and do the hand sewing part on the road!
More travel friendly crafts include crochet, knitting, cross stitch, tatting, plastic canvas, etc … My daughter cross stitches in the car on long road trips!
I hope this has inspired you to take a hand sewing project along on your next trip! These ideas also are great for moms like me who spend more than their fair share of time in the car waiting on kiddos in dance or sports. I always have to have something to do — one can only spend so much time looking at memes on their phone, haha.
Cheers!
Nikki
