Exciting Events

The first three months of 2026 have been full of exciting events in the Hottovy household. We celebrated my mother’s 89th birthday with a family dinner at Lost Rail Golf Course.

I attended three Broadway shows at the Orpheum in Omaha with Melissa, Kevin, and Kevin’s family—the Neil Diamond musical A Beautiful Noise was my favorite!

We also celebrated Ruby’s 5th birthday in Minnesota with a party for her friends at Lifetime Fitness. We made a trip to Dubuque, Iowa, where I helped a good college friend with his final Junior High Honor Band at Loras College. And we welcomed the newest member of our family, Oliver Ray Dawson, on February 25.

I was also excited to make progress on my 2026 to-do list by finishing three of the eleven projects. At this rate, I’ll be able to complete them all by the end of the year—that would be a first!

The first project I finished was the dinosaur quilt I made for my grandson, Henry. It is based on a pattern designed by Elizabeth Hartman and features six different pieced dinosaurs. While I had completed all of the blocks by the end of last year, I still needed to assemble everything into the quilt top. I thought I had a few more months to finish it, but Hank moved into his “big boy” bed sooner than I expected. That was just the motivation I needed! When I showed him the finished quilt, he said, “Look at all of those dinosaurs! I love it!” That made me a very happy grandma.

The second project I completed was for my quilt guild’s scrappy challenge. I chose to make a string quilt—a fun and easy way to use a lot of scraps from my stash—and had already finished all 30 blocks by the end of last year. The next step was stitching the blocks into a quilt top and loading it onto my quilting machine. I then dove into my binding scraps and found just enough brightly colored fabrics to add the finishing touch. I’m always amazed at how beautiful these quilts turn out when I’ve used so many random fabrics that wouldn’t seem to go together otherwise. While I had a hard time giving this one away, I did donate it to our guild’s charity. And I’m pretty sure I have enough scraps to make another one just for me!

The third project I finished was a quilt for our new baby, Oliver. It is from a paper-pieced pattern by Made By Marley called Dogs Only. It features 12 different dogs embellished with embroidery stitches and buttons. While I purchased fabric for the borders, sashing, and background, I was able to use fabric from my stash for the puppies. Ollie’s big brother, Finn, is convinced that Grandpa made the quilt since he saw him hang it on the wall. Hopefully, we can set him straight one of these days!

In addition, I made progress on two other projects from my to-do list. One is from a kit I purchased from Connecting Threads called Tea in the Parlor. It is a two-block pattern using cream, teal, navy blue, and dark gray fabrics. I started working on it during two sew days sponsored by my quilt guild in January. I had intended to make significant progress during our February sew days; however, baby Ollie decided to make his appearance at that time! Since then, I’ve been working on it off and on at home and now have the 15 A blocks completed.

I have also been making steady progress on the counted cross-stitch Christmas stocking I’m making for Ollie. I’ve nearly finished the entire middle section and will soon begin working on the top and bottom. It needs to be done by Christmas so Santa can fill it with goodies for our new baby!

I also completed 13 customer quilts and eight Quilts of Valor. It’s no wonder the first three months of this year have gone by so quickly.