It is July already! I’m not sure how that happened but there sure has been a lot of activity in the Hottovy household during the past three months. We have had a lot of family time including celebrating Ruby’s and Hank’s birthdays in Omaha, Finn’s baptism in Pella, our 40th wedding anniversary in Duluth, Minnesota, and Finn’s 1st birthday in Pella. We also took in six Husker baseball games cheering them on to their first Big Ten Tournament title at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha. And I attended two Broadway shows at the Orpheum in Omaha with Kevin and Melissa - Pretty Woman and Moulin Rouge. So the question is — did anything get accomplished in the sewing room? In fact it did as I was able to check two projects off of the to-do list. Granted they were small projects but the feeling of accomplishment was there nonetheless.
The first project that I finished was the Super Secret Project which was a small quilt for Finn’s 1st birthday. My good friend, Meredith Smidt, found this adorable panel soon after Finn was born and it matched the outer space theme of his nursery perfectly. After contemplating what to do with it I decided to just add a piano key border to each side. I then quilted it with a swirl design in lime green thread and used the backing fabric - which looked like multi-color planets - for the binding. A fun quilt made for my youngest grandchild!
The second project that I checked off of the list was the patriotic table topper. I was motivated to finish this quilt that I had in the works for a year since the season to display my red, white, and blue quilts was fast approaching. While decorating for last summer I realized that I could use another small patriotic quilt. I did some research online and discovered a cute pattern called aaPicking Petals. I ordered the pattern and then searched my stash for just the right fabrics. While the pattern required some care with the points, it was a fun to make. I stitched a custom design using continuous curves and pebbles in white, red, light blue, and dark blue threads. Now I have it displayed on an end table in our family room. It was nice to have something new to use!
One project that I made significant progress on was the Swoon quilt that I have been working on for Ruby. I finally finished all 20 blocks! Since it took about two hours to complete each block I was excited to have a major portion of the top done. I then thought that I could easily get the sashing added and have the entire quilt top finished for this update - until I laid out the blocks and discovered that I had put two of the blocks together wrong. Ugh!! And it wasn’t just an easy fix. I had to completely remake those two blocks. As a result, I have only two of the rows put together instead of all five. Maybe I’ll have it done by the next update!
I also made some progress on one of the kits that I purchased from Connecting Threads. In order to prepare for a Sew Day with the Panama Quilt Guild in June I cut out all of the fabric for the Written By The Stars quilt. Unfortunately I didn’t get any sewing done on this project as the Sew Day was ultimately moved to July.
I made minimal progress on my English Paper-Piecing project as I added nine - only nine! - hexagons to the half row that I completed at the beginning of the year. I usually work on this quilt during the evenings and lately have found myself doing more bindings as well as starting on a new project. (Stay tuned for more information on the new project.) And I just am not very motivated to work on the EPP project as I don’t have any specific use for it in mind. I’m also at the stage of the project that I don’t really like to do - whip-stitching the hexagons together. I like basting the fabrics to the templates but this next step can be pretty tedious. We’ll see what I get accomplished next on this project. It may not be much!
I was very busy in April and May completing customer quilts for graduation. I stitched 17 total projects including two t-shirt quilts. I also stitched nine Quilts of Valor. So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that time is moving so quickly. It tends to do that when the days are filled with fun things to do!
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