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!

Category Archives: for the home

Ellie’s bedroom redo in progress

Last month we moved Ellie from her crib to the futon in her room and got rid of the crib.  Suddenly there was a room there instead of just a giant pile of furniture!  I made her room my November project,building a bookcase for her (and look!  there’s a floor where all the books and […]

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christmas towels

These stay put towels are a huge hit.  That post has been on pinterest more than any of my other posts!!  (Which cracks me up because the tutorial isn’t even mine!) I made a couple for Christmas gifts and I just love how they came out!  (All of the towels are from Target.)  For the […]

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easy ipad case

I made a quick case for the ipad on Friday.  I end up sticking it in my purse a bunch and I wanted it to be a little protected as it rattles around with all the rest of the crapola I drag around. It’s a super simple design–I used fusible fleece for the interfacing and […]

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casserole pot holder

Putting to rest our longstanding tradition of pulling hot items out of the oven with old cloth diaper prefolds is this lovely casserole pot holder!  It’s not my most favorite fabric combination ever, but I had surprisingly little fabric left over after the tablecloth and towel extravaganza. (No pattern or tutorial for this one–it’s easy […]

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fancy pants kitchen towels

TUTORIAL FOR THESE TOWELS IS LOCATED HERE Another long-time-coming kitchen project crossed off the list!  I used this tutorial for making some kitchen towels to tie to the oven–I’m pretty sure the white towels I used were even the exact ones from the tutorial (bar mop towels from Target). While I love the look of […]

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tablecloths and my favorite mugs

My productivity has slowed to a dreary trickle this week, because I’ve been going to bed at 8pm.  I realized that in my week of doing this I lost 28 hours of sewing/productive time!  On the other hand, I gained over an entire day of sleep in just a single week, so no wonder I […]

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