Lil Sew & Sew

So my family went on a little camping trip from So Cali to Sedona, Arizona in our RV.  As you saw from last post, I packed a cute little travelling set up:

Hubby always does the driving, and since there was over 6 hours of drive time, I snuck to the back of the RV, and put the Lil Sew & Sew to work on the little kitchen table:

I had pre-cut my charm squares with my Sizzix die cut machine for 2 1/2" HST's (LOVE that thing!), so I was ready to just chain sew these together.  It was a little sketchy at times, especially with how the hubster drives, but I was able to keep a pretty straight stitch, and sewed all of my HST's together on the way there.  YAY!

Our first night there, we had down time toward the end of the night, so I busted out my cute little iron and set up a pressing station:

Worked perfectly!  So I got a nice little stack of squares all ready to sew into leaf blocks.  Because camping quilts should have leaves in them.

The next morning, I was super-excited to start sewing my blocks.  I sewed the stem blocks using a technique that Lori Holt of "A Bee In My Bonnet" fame demonstrated HERE.  Lori's awesome, and I have plans to start her Bloom Sew Along soon.  Check her out!  Anyway, her stem block was a little tricky on this little machine, but I was able to make them work.

So freaking cute!!!  However, my Lil Sew & Sew decided it didn't want to play anymore, and it started skipping stitches.  Badly.  After much trial and error, I figured out that the bobbin shuttle wasn't picking up the top thread every time.  I've tried a bunch of different remedies as per the power of Google, but it is still skipping.  So it's sitting in its box until I feel like trying to figure out why it's being bad.  But I had Plan B, which was my hand-piecing project, and I was able to get my sewing fix the old fashioned way...thank goodness for low tech options! :-).

And in case you've never been to Sedona, perhaps these gorgeous pics will inspire you to make a trip: