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!

(discussing Nic’s and my rings)
Will: Can I have a ring?
Me: Yes! When you grow up and get married, you’ll get a ring.
Will (snuggling into me): But I’m allergic about getting married.
Me: [chuckle]
Will: Can I just marry you?
Me: Sorry–I’m already married to Daddy.
Will (quietly): I’m just a little bit shy about marrying someone else.

overheard

[ellie fussing, will trying to comfort her]

I’m your BROTHER, Ellie.

ELOISE, I’m your BROTHER.

I’m your brother Eloise—I love you.

ooh la la

It’s appropriate that it is Oscar time, because I’m about to say ‘it really IS an honor just to be nominated!’  I have fell behind on my google reader feed this weekend and so I didn’t know that my eiffel tower pillow had made it into Rachel’s top nine February pillows until now!  It didn’t win, but it didn’t need to–my day was already made just to see my pillow in that grid!  Thanks so much Rachel!

March’s guest judge is the one and only Aneela Hoey (the genius behind sherbet pips).  I can’t decide whether to try to rock out a fabulous pillow for March, or whether to accept that I’d crumple under the pressure and end up rocking myself in the fetal position under Edna Elizabeth.

Jacey - My pillow was one of the lucky nine as well! I just love your Eiffel Tower embroidery. It’s awesome!

Melissa - I was super excited for you when I saw your dad’s pillow in her final selection! You deserved it! 🙂

Have you seen the prize for the top pillow next month? 5 (FIVE!) YARDS of Sherbet Pips?! How can you not enter?

branching out

I was recently at a fabric store in the Springs that sells a lot of non-quilting fabrics.  Their anniversary sale (and the pretty colors) convinced me to go out on a limb and purchase some new fabrics.  As I’m tackling more and more clothing, I’m really wanting to branch out into apparel type fabrics.  Here are the three I picked up.

The first is a pintucked fabric in a coral shade that I think will make a nice skirt.  The only trouble is that I’ve been disappointed with how it washed–it required very serious ironing, and it still doesn’t look very nice.  The middle fabric is a stretch knit jersey, which I’m very excited about, because I’ve been wanting to start sewing with knits, but I’ve been hesitant to buy anything that doesn’t have some stretch to it.  The bottom fabric is my favorite find–a yard of wool in one of my current favorite colors.  I love this burnt yellow color–I swear it’s the new black!  It has pencil skirt written all over it to me, and I am giving myself a fair bit of time for this one.  I’d like to have it for next fall, but figure it might take me a bit to find the perfect pattern and fit before cutting into this gorgeous wool!

another wallet

I made a bunch of these cash and carry wallets before Christmas and found them to be a fun quick project.  I think my confidence level was too high because when I made this one for our trip (I don’t want to carry around my big heavy normal wallet all day), it turned out to be not-so-awesome.  I actually sewed in a couple of puckers in the yellow fabric and the gray bottom stripe gets wider on one side.  Not my finest effort.  But I love the pop of the aqua zipper!

Susanne - Seriously, can you post a tut on how to get your corners so perfect?? I can’t for the life of me get a corner that doesn’t look like camel toe. (SO SORRY for those PG readers)

name tag

I’m buried in laundry, but I keep forgetting to share my front range modern quilt guild name badge!  I was in the mood for some free motion stitching one night, and I’ve been in love with this idea since seeing it in Scandinavian Stitches, so I whipped this puppy up!  (The V.P. stands for Vice President.  Yup.  I’m a vice president of a quilting guild.  Which everyone who knew me as a teen TOTALLY saw coming.)  😛  I wanted to write ‘edna elizabeth’ on the machine but decided that since name tags are really for people that DON’T know me, throwing two extra names on there would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.  (Nic also pointed out that Edna is black, not white, but if I was going to do that, I would have needed yellow thread for the outline and name and I don’t have yellow.)

MichelleW - Such a cool name badge!

Little Bluebell (Adrianne) - Traci! That’s the best name tag ever!!! I keep reminding how small it is as I look at all the details. You are such a talented free motion stitcher. I remember your cat in the hat and your reindeer. ALL wonderful!

Rissa - That is so cute! I love how you just “whipped it up” when I’m sure it would take many people (or at least me!!) forever to do anything vaguely like that, hehe! I love it!

Dolores - Love it!! You are very clever!! 🙂