Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    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!

Ellie occassionally swapps woah-wee for William.  It is very very cute to hear her say his long name!

She is picking up baby signs at an astonishing pace.  She’s got

please

banana

shoes

socks

coat

love you

wind

And her spoken vocabulary just gets bigger every day.  One of the things that I love about the signs is that often it’s with the sign that I am able to really catch the word that she is saying.  Like “shoes” as a word I may have missed, but with the sign I understood that she was saying shoes.  Pretty cool stuff!

open backed and shirred baby dresses

Remember this shirred dress I made for Ellie?  The straps in front were too far apart, and it took me until yesterday to get around to fixing them!  It’s super cute on her and I know there are more in our future!

Underneath she wore a pair of bloomers that is able to do double duty between these two dresses.

Another open backed baby dress (with buttonhole instead of elastic loop) in a Riley Blake print with some green/white dots on the reverse side.

Girl sewing is so much fun!

(And yes, my children are rarely seen in the afternoon without a graham cracker in hand!)

felicity - As I scrolled through this post, I actually said out loud, “Oh my god that kid is so cute.” And she is. As are the dresses.

Susanne - She IS SUPER cute!! I love that open back dress. I’m not sure if my L is excited about the dress, graham cracker or Ellie….but she sure is screaming and pointing at the screen with some enthusiasm!! HAHA!!

Jenny Yarbrough - Just discovered your blog! Not sure how I haven’t stumbled upon it in the past. I’m glad to have found it! Come by and say hi when you get a chance…

Ashley - She is too cute, my goodness! Love the dresses too, but Ellie with her Graham cracker -just adorable!

EASY toddler dress – reversible open backed baby dress

This is one of the coolest easy summer dress patterns for babies that I’ve run across.  You can make the whole outfit including bloomers in just over an hour if you’re fast, and the dress doesn’t require a serger at all–it’s a great beginner clothing project.  I got the pattern on Etsy here. I just went it went higher in size–she’d be cute in these next year, too!

It looks super cute with a contrasting cloth diaper:

Here’s a peek at the reversed side:

I made a few adjustments–top stitching around the edges and using a buttonhole instead of an elastic loop.

I didn’t purchase the separate bloomers pattern, instead I used the bloomers pattern from Weekend Sewing (I love her illustrated step-by-steps).

It’s so easy that I’ve already made another bloomers/dress set, but I’ll save that post for later.  We’re shooting four weddings in the next two weeks so there won’t be much sewing going on!

 

Beth Moore - Good lord that model is CUUUUH UUUUTE!!! Freaking adorable. Oh, and the dress is TDF too. I regret I never made any dresses like that for Lil’ when she was in cloth dipes. Sigh and swoon.

Susie - Oh Traci, your girlie is too cute. Love this simple dress and bloomers, TFS!

Erin - This is very cute! I’m just getting into sewing for my 2 yr old daughter, and I would love to try something like this. I’m living in a developing country right now, and fabric is my main problem. Might have to try and find something online…
Anyway, lovely dress and very cute little girl! Thanks for the inspiration 🙂

Stephanie - Traci!! I love that dress you made Ellie… and I can’t believe how big she is!!!!!! She’s too cute for words. Seeing all this is reminding me to finish that skirt you helped me start last summer, hehe *sheepish*… I hope your summer is going well, let’s catch up soon! 🙂

Tonight a client hurt my feelings, so now I’m considering whether it would be bad parenting to wake up Will so he can love me and I can be the best person in the whole world in his eyes.

I think the very best part of being a stay at home mom is that Will and Ellie are together all day.  When Ellie goes down for her nap, Will is like a lost puppy, constantly asking when she will wake up.  (And often helping the process along.) 

Today I was putting on my makeup in the bathroom and they were playing with a costco package of paper towel rolls in the bedroom (Will has always ADORED Costco packages of toilet paper, paper towels, or tuna fish and will make endless amounts of games out of them).  It was cuteness every three seconds with Will constantly saying things like

“Do you want to play Fight the Dinosaur with me, El-wheeze?”

“oh THANK you, El-wheeze.  You’re such a sweet baby to give that to me!”

“Do you want to do team work now, El-wheeze?  Teamwork is when you work together.”

all in the nicest sing-song-iest voice. 

As we drove to dinner last night we heard Ellie hysterically laughing, but no other sounds.  Turning to look, Will was simply making funny faces for her, over and over and over again. 

And when we see that sweetness, hear that love, it’s hard not to feel like we are in the very best moments of our lives and it’s bittersweet to know that they will be bigger before we even know it.

Quiet Book Sew-Along is On!

A couple of people commented that they were up for a Quiet Book Sew Along, so that’s good enough for me–we are on!

The plan: complete a Quiet Book (for a Christmas present if you like) before October 1st.  This should allow for a relaxed pace, but still free up all of October for Halloween costume making, and leave November and December for holiday-making!

The book: Quiet Books can be super simple and fast or elaborate and time consuming.  It’s really up to the page and construction style you choose.  For me, I’m using this pinterest board for inspiration as opposed to following a pattern, but I will be using the Piece and Quiet Book pattern for the overall book construction.

The community: I’ve started a flickr group for us to share our photos.  Starting July 15th (coincidentally, my birthday!) I’ll host Quiet Book Fridays on the blog and I hope you’ll also post Quiet Book updates on Fridays!  I’ve made up a little blog button for participants above.  You’ll want to link it to the following url (a link to the quiet book category where all of the quiet book posts will end up):  http://www.realphotography.com/traci/?cat=42

Sew Along schedule:

July 15th – Sharing Plans (fabric, pattern, page sketches)

Fridays July 22nd-Sept 16th – Sharing Pages (this is 9 weeks for the pages of your quiet book, so for planning purposes you could take a week off, make one page a week, and have an 8 page quiet book.  I’m planning on making a larger book, so will need to have a bit faster pace.)

Sept 22nd and Sept 30th – Construction and Full Reveal (putting the pages together and showing off the finished project)

Alexis - count me in!i have a half finished quiet book which i haven’t touched for a year – this is the perfect kick up the you know what!

ang - love it ! you know what…..( i’m making a quiet book for ME!!! ) sssssshhhhhhh…xx

nicke - yay! i am in!

Vickie Angell - I did some searching and found these corrections to the Piece and Quiet pattern over on The Quilted Fish’s website:

“Under Complete Supply List -Please add 2 yards of fabric for page backing Fun on the Farm 3. Cut 2 pieces of red fabric 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″.”

Hugs!