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

Masthead header
Needles and a Pen bio picture
  • 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!

WIP: sherbet pips quilt

Last night after everyone went to sleep I spent some quality time downstairs with hulu plus and my sherbet pips stack!

After I made the second block (the doggie one below) I went back to redo the first block.  I wasn’t a big fan of it when I finished it, and I realized I wanted to do smaller strips in the blocks.  I’m much happier with it now.

I’m really happy that I decided to add the chartreuse.  Each block will have a tiny bit of it and I think it’s going to really ‘pop’ the whole thing.

My third and most favorite block!

EEE!  I’m super excited about how this is looking!

Louisa - What great fabrics! I love the blocks you’ve come up with. Awesome!

Emily - These are gorgeous! I love the style of these blocks and they’re definitely going into the inspiration gallery for my month of my Bee! 🙂 Lovely work!!

Jolene - This is the first quilt made from Sherbet Pips that I really like. The chartreuse and dark brown have livened it up. Great eye for color you have!

Susanne - Jolene,

It reminds me of your drunk love quilt.

Rylee - When I first saw this fabric line I wasn’t a fan, but these blocks are amazing!

freedom

Fact:  For four years and ten months, I was the preferred parent.  If there was whining, it was directed at me.  If there was bedtime, I needed to be there to nurse the baby to sleep or read the stories.  If there was hunger, I needed to make the food.

And then, like the winds changing in Mary Poppins, everything switched.

Ellie likes Nic

The week of Christmas I photographed two weddings and Nic stayed home with the kiddos.  Further time off during the holidays has compressed this magical fact:  Ellie wants Nic

When I rock her at bedtime she chants “Da Da Daddy.  Da Da Daddy.”  When he comes in the room she reaches her arms out to him, ready to be held by him.  When we were both on our computers and she decided she was done playing and wanted to start pestering, HIS was the leg she was crawling up…HIS was the ear she was whining in.

“She just WHINES at me.”  He says. 

“Welcome to MY life.”  I say. 

And then I do an obnoxious “She likes you best—sucks to be you!” happy dance.

Nic has been off for the past three days and it has been the best most glorious vacation.  Will and Nic play their fun boy games, and Ellie wants to be right there.  When she’s whiny and needs a nap, Nic rocks her and feeds her a bottle.  When she wants to have a party at 2am, Nic takes it and then I take the kids in the morning.  Or I take it and Nic takes the kids in the morning.  It’s been like there’s two of me. 

It’s like a Christmas miracle.

a day in the life apron revisited (sorry)

Are you crazy tired of aprons yet?  Sorry.  Just one more to go after this one, I promise!

I liked the last one so much I had to make one for me.  Since I know it will get a lot of use, I added top stitching.  I like that I took an ‘apron in one hour’ tutorial and created a 4 hour lined, topstitched, interfaced BEAST.

This one uses the other half of the ‘a day in the life’ fabric.  The way it’s printed is like a panel–it even has a title at the top “a day in the life” and goes though from morning up top through night at the bottom (the last line “i’m too tired honey” I cropped out for the gift apron)!  😀  I added an extra stripe to the reverse side on this version.  You know, to mix things up.  

We’re in the process of getting our first big snow of the year today, and it sucked up all the indoor light (sorry for the soft pictures!), so I took this puppy out in the snow for a few shots.

monkey pajamas

I made a set of sock monkey pajamas for a little girl who will be celebrating her birthday this week.  I don’t know how I used to whip out these pajama pants in 10 minutes, though–they take me a solid hour now!  I loved this sock monkey fabric, and this is actually from the first Moda release.  Even when I wasn’t really sewing or quilting much, I would still occassionally wander into a fabric shop and grab a yard or two for projects I fully intended to complete.  Curses on me for not doing that while Flea Market Fancy was around!!  😛  It’s really nice to put the stash to good use, though–making gifts has been so much fun this holiday!

We got ALL the best toys.

Will, Christmas morning.

Baby’s First Shiner