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!

fabric stacks: inspiring versus stressful

This pretty little combination reminds me of spring and inspires me:

This stack–my ‘inbox’ for clothes I plan to sew–has grown too large and instead of inspiring, it stresses me out.  I desperately need to stop adding projects to my pile and complete the projects already planned.  My eyes are always bigger than the hours in my day!

The three knits on the left are for skirts for me, the next four are to be turned into dresses for Ellie (though that red plaid may be moved back into MY pile–I think it would be the cutest ‘back to school’ style skirt), the purples are for a patchwork skirt, and the hope valley is being more hoarded than intended for anything.  The yellow wool will be the cutest pencil skirt in existance, the pintuck fabric is for a skirt, and the cream is for lining waistbands of the skirts currently in my sewing machine.  Add to that two already cut circle skirts…and I imagine that even if I sewed exclusively from this basket, I’d have more than enough projects to round out May and June!

In other clothing news, I saw on fellow FRMQGer Audrey’s blog that there are two upcoming garment sew-alongs that are interesting.  The first is the Kid’s Clothes Week Challenge which starts Monday.  For seven days, sew an hour a day on clothing for the little ones.  We have family coming into town Friday, so I won’t be sewing on Saturday or Sunday, but I plan on making up for it during the week by sewing two hours most days.  I have two Oliver + S patterns for Ellie, and I’d like to complete one and make a go of another.

The second sew-along is The Summer of No Pants–a skirt sewing (and wearing challenge).  The wearing part would be perfect for me, since I’ve devoted lots of time this spring to making skirts (I have at least half a dozen now), but the timing of the sew along doesn’t work.  I’m planning on taking the kids back to Seattle for a large chunk of that time, and my own personal plan had been to have most of my skirts finished by the end of May so I would be able to enjoy them for the whole summer.

I also have some family memory documenting on my docket.  I’ve got two great groupons for Blurb, but they expire in June and July, which means I need to get cracking on the Disneyland, 2010-in-review and 2009-in-review albums I have planned for the coupons!  I’m also hoping to have our 2010 home movie/slideshow done by the end of May (though June is probably more likely)–these movies take a ridiculous amount of hours for me to edit, organize, and add soundtracks to!

Sandra - I have the same type of scary stack that was threatening to topple over my sewing machine and stopping me from sewing so i took the plunge and got cutting out projects the other day. Glad i am not alone in the overwhelming sewing “inbox”

Audrey - I can’t wait to see what you make! I may only get a couple days in on the Kid’s Week sew, but it is better than nothing!