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!

Heather’s quilt

I have been wanting to make my famously cold sister-in-law a quilt for a long time, but couldn’t decide on a pattern or fabrics.  I wanted something that would fit in with the style of their home, but struggled to think of something modern enough.  I decided that the FRMQG solids challenge (use at least a little bit of each of the squares in our solids charm pack with the addition of just one other fabric) would be perfect for her, especially if I paired the solids with linen.  I saw a similar quilt somewhere long ago–a rainbow rectangle in the center with a navy background–but I can’t remember who made it (sorry!).

Look carefully, because this is the first and LAST quilt I’ll make with true linen.  😛  It’s like sewing with burlap–I find it impossible to cut or piece straight and as a result, it’s a little wonkier than I would like.  With such a minimalist design, any inaccuracies are obvious!  My favorite part, though, is the tiny bit of aqua in the binding.

I decided to quilt it very simply by outlining the rainbow box with white perle cotton.  I had so much fun quilting it that I know I’ll be using lots more perle cotton!  It’s backed with more linen and will hopefully be a perfect lap quilt for Heather’s place!

Erik Henne - Were the babies in picture two part of the present? If so, they must of fallen out in transit. No babies in the box…

nicke - totally in love with that! pinning it!

Alli - That’s so pretty! I love the way your outline quilting looks. Is there batting between the layers?

Heather Henne - I love it!! The aqua in the binding is my favorite part too — I’m always folding it so it will show and it looks great on our leather chair 🙂 I would like to clarify that when she says her “cold sister-in-law” she means, cold temperature and not cold hearted ;D

Holly Abston - I LOVE LOVE LOVE this quilt! It is a perfect mix of modern/graphic and still nostalgic and sort of soft with the wrinkles-are-ok-linen. Love it.