Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .
I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!
I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!
For 2021 I’m setting similar goals to 2020–some building, some knitting, some sewing, some scrapbooking!
I loved finishing my yearbook album quilt at long last, so I’ve chosen another quilt in WIP purgatory: this bow tie block quilt whose quilt top is actually complete but requires a quilt back and quilting.
The Carolyn Pajamas are one of my favorite instagram hashtag projects to follow. I am intimidated as all get-out though after reading reports that people have spent DAYS on the pajama bottoms. (Days! On pajama bottoms!)
Like last year, I left this ‘dress’ category open, but I’d like to continue my coverstitch journey and finish off my Comic Con dress this year. Sadly Comic Con in Denver has already been cancelled for 2021 (as it was in 2020) so motivation on that dress is low
My front porch is a bit of an eyesore with all of its shoes and run-down looking milk box. I have a building project I’ve been designing in my mind for a couple of years that would incorporate a bench, some less in-your-face shoe piles, and a milkbox. We’ll see if I can finish the mental design and draft it into reality!
The almost-complete sweater really does need love in 2021.
My week-in-the-life project got two albums completed last year, but I still have holes to fill completing the 2015, 2016 and 2018 albums. I’ll see if I can prioritize some computer time to completing at least a 2021, 2018, and 2015 album this year!
I cheated last year and made shirts for Ellie instead of myself. This year the goal is an ADULT shirt!
My mudroom closet needs some reorganizing, and I have my eye on using the Ikea PAX system to remodel this closet.
I always meant to make Christmas stockings. Let this be the year it happens!
While 2020 didn’t go as planned, I was surprised to learn I actually finished eight of the nine projects I’d set as a goal for in those naive early days of pre-pandemic 2020!
I failed to pick up knitting needles even once in 2020, but the rest of the projects, even the massive building project and the forever-a-WIP Jesse tree ornaments got finished!
Only some of these projects got shared, so I look forward to posting details in the next couple of weeks!
After my Woodstock Tee success I couldn’t wait to try the Happy Tank, also by Hey June Handmade.
It did not make me happy.
The strap attachments are difficult and don’t look great. I can’t imagine a way to make them straight or finished looking with the bulk of four braided straps being attached to a small section, either. It’s crazy easy to twist the straps, too, and I actually redid one side only to twist it up again.
(It’s a free pattern, so complaining this much makes me a jerk.)
I didn’t hem it and asked Ellie to put it on for some pics and then I would toss it.
Ellie, however, LOVED it.
So I hemmed it, she wears it, and she’s just not supposed to tell people I made it. 😛
Some projects turn out better than our expectations and some don’t quite get there. For me, this little turtle hide-and-seek toy is in the latter category!
I purchased clear fabric, plastic beads, and some tiny charms to make an ‘I Spy’ toy for…ELOISE. Oops.
Luckily I know of another sweet small girl who could enjoy such a toy so I decided I should make it quickly before my niece, too, is way too old for I Spy toys!
Originally my plan was to make a simple square, but after a little internet search and seeing all the creative shapes you can make with these, I realized a turtle would be perfect because it is (a) cute and (b) a tribute to my sister who LOVED turtles when she was young.
The end result is a hand drafted turtle who is a tiny bit wonky…but made with lots of love none-the-less.
With my sewing area finally coming together, I’ve been doing a lot more sewing! One of my ongoing goals has been to make friends with my coverstitch machine (a Janome Coverpro 900) and I realized practicing on garments for the KIDS is a lot less angsty that working on garments for ME.
This Woodstock Swing Tee from Hey June Handmade came together so quickly and painlessly with the serger and coverstitch machines. The only thing I did to stabilize the hems was serge the edge first and then use that as a guide for pressing. The hem stitches are beautiful! No tunneling or puckers, so I am a happy camper!
Ellie is a huge fan of the swing-y cut of this tee and I can’t believe it’s a free pattern! Definitely worth printing a go for your kids/tweens!
Fabric: old knit from my stash with a small amount of stretch Pattern:Woodstock Swing TeePattern notes/adjustments: None!
I went to high school in England, enjoying 7th-12th grade at a British private school in the northwest of England. The end of high school was also the end of my time in England, and I was very sad that there although my American peers had their yearbooks and a series of reunions to look forward to, there would be none of that for me as a British school system graduate.
Because I was am a giant nerd, though, I had the idea to make my own yearbook in the form of an album quilt. I made the album blocks, ironed freezer paper to the back of them, and took them to school with Pigma Micron pens and asked a selection of friends to write messages for me. I even mailed one (or maybe managed the handoff in person?) to my American bestie who had returned to the US two years earlier.
I planned to set the blocks on point in a sea of white and do beautiful hand quilting in all that negative space and have the quilt grace my college extra long twin bed.
That obviously did not happen.
I had finished the quilt top promptly (I assume) in 2001, but never got around to basting it and as the years went on I realized this project might go unfinished forever. Not only was the hand quilting keeping me from getting started, but teenagers can be a little cringy, and most of the quilt block messages still have me rolling my eyes.
Then, in 2012 I started seeing this amazing machine quilting from pictures around the quilting blogs I followed (this was back when people read blogs). I wrote to her and got on her list of quilts to tackle. She was a little behind, but I told her not to worry at all because I was excited to see what she could do and I would rather her tackle the quilt when inspiration struck. I certainly hadn’t been in a rush in the previous decade to get it done, so there was no rush now.
That quilter is Angela Walters.
If you are not a quilter that means nothing to you. But I managed to get on the waiting list of the most famous long arm quilter right before she became super quilt world famous and hiring her to the do the quilting on your quilt was no longer something you could do.
Her career was exploding, so it did take over 2 years to get the quilt back. Unfortunately the original backing (plain white to match the front) had been misplaced and she swapped it with a white on white backing. I actually really loathe white on white fabric and I was so disappointed that it was all I could see when I looked at the quilt for a couple of years.
Eventually I moved on (I mean, I have a quilt quilted by Angela Walters!), but by that time I was in nursing school and didn’t have much time for sewing.
In the last year or two I went to create binding for this so-close-to-being-done quilt, and I was upset to see that the leftover fabric that I’d been saving for the binding, fabric I’d moved across continents and countries and decades, was gone. I kept hoping it would turn up, kept checking different places, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
Last month I decided that it was time to move on once again with this quilt that just never wants to behave. I would bind it with plain white fabric and give up the unreasonable hope that the fabric would turn up. While my original vision had been for a scrappy binding to match the scrappy border, hadn’t I rolled with other punches to the vision? I decided the fabric must have been accidentally discarded in The Great Fabric Purge of 2018 and it was time to chop up some white Kona.
And then, while looking for the felt to finish off my Jesse Tree Ornaments (and other big WIP commitment of this winter), I FOUND THE FABRIC! A very satisfying end to this quilt’s 19 year saga!
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