March Quilting Accomplishments

March was a pretty successful sewing month for me. I had 85 hours of sewing time in, while a lot of it was hexies. I did do a lot of prep work for retreat, so not many pictures of the blocks.
I finished Ahhhh #13.

I completed the unity top and it now needs borders.

I finished the snowflake as an example for my class on hexies.

I made this striped table runner for the shop. It turned out great and was fast and easy.

I made the Hugs and Kisses quilt and the backing, so it is set aside with the batting ready for quilting.

I sewed up and cut up this layer cake into HST's in preparation for retreat when I'll make a chevron quilt.

I finished the Peaks quilt which was a Moda challenge at the shop.

I feel great with all I accomplished and hope to get more prep work done for retreat this month.

Friday Finishes!

This week was less productive than I am accustomed to, but life sometimes gets in the way of my goals. I did finish the binding on my Moda challenge quilt for the store on Tues. I dropped it off and they are all hanging up ready for the preview party on Sat. Looking at mine and Emilee's they are so different, but both look neat. I'll try to get a picture. I'm so excited that we get to do this again next quarter!

On Wednesday my brother Jim called and we visited for over 2 hours. Guess we hadn't chatted in a while and needed to catch up. On a whim I pulled out this layer cake of Max and Whiskers and went into the crawl space and grabbed the gray I had bought for a scrap quilt and decided to make a chevron quilt. I've now come to realize it's going to be a big quilt. I had bought it with another idea in mind and that didn't pay out, so it's headed in another direction. I had planned to give it to a good friend, but I keep thinking of others I could give it to, so it's still up for grabs. Maybe I should see who comments on wanting it and give it away that way.
I sewed all the blocks last night and just need to trim and press and they will be ready to assemble at quilt retreat. Yes, I am already preparing even though it is more than a month away. I've decided to get a bunch of quilts ready to assemble. I'll have room to lay them out and then I can have finished tops when I am done. So far I have this one, but I hope to get Scrappy Swoon, Thangles BOM, and maybe B/W/Pink quilts into blocks. Then I'll take the Swoon kits to work on those blocks. I'm going to do more prepping than finishing in April. I also got the Easy #4 quilt blocks sewn, so they can be another quilt top to assemble.

Tues night my co-worker gave us her tickets for the Rush hockey game. Since it was last minute, we had no time to find a sitter, so we took the kids. Mikaela loved it and was really good. She loved seeing the mascot Nugget. She was so happy she couldn't contain herself and kept jumping up and down.

Mathew on the other hand thought sleep was a better idea. He's obviously outgrown his cute little Jacks hat, but he was cozy. My co-workers dad sat next to us and he told her the next day what good kids we had and they were so well behaved and he'd adopt them as grandkids. She said "and that's coming from a man who doesn't like kids". I was so please to hear that he thought they were good.

Last night Mikaela insisted on holding Mathew, like she normally does. We have to help, but we do let her when she's sitting down. She's such a good big sister and loves to help. She rocks Mathew in his carseat when I'm getting everything ready in the morning and is always ready to "help" when needed.

Busy Sewing

This has been a busy week of sewing for me and I have gotten quite a bit accomplished. I worked on this table runner that is a sample for the shop. It uses a stripe and turns our really neat! I just straight line quilted it.

This is the whole table runner. It's actually pretty small, which I like in a table runner. So many are too big for actual tables.

I really don't have anything else pressing, so Wed. night I put this block together for my Unity wall hanging, then called it quits because it was late. Thank goodness I did and took a picture. The bottom right corner was turned wrong and I would have made all the blocks wrong if I hadn't looked at the picture.

Thurs. night I put the wall hanging together. Now I just have to figure out borders. I have plenty of fabric, just need to get it done.

I also finished up this Ahhhh. It's number 13 and turned out pretty good.

Friday night I was at Club Sew and laid out this Hugs and Kisses quilt. It's a pattern by Jaybird Quilts and turned out super cute. It's 50x66, so I'll be pushing myself, but I think I can quilt it on my frame if I am careful. I made the backing for it Sat. night, so it is ready to quilt.

I also finished up my hexie snowflake and we took a picture of it for a class sample on some fairy frost.

However I decided to finish it with blue felt and it looks good on it too. I used my mini iron and that really helped to have good sharp points.

Sunday I quilted my shop challenge quilt. We will reveal all of the quilts on Sat., so I'm working hard on binding this one this week.

I also quilted up my scrappy unwind quilt and have that quilt finished, but I think my picture must be on my camera. Here's to another great week of sewing and finishing UFO's!

Bloglovin'

I'm preparing to make the change over to Bloglovin since Google Reader is going away. I've decided it's time to clean up my blogs that I follow as well. Reorganizing them makes me think about the ones I enjoy and look forward to reading. Hopefully I don't delete some that I enjoy. If you're on Bloglovin, I hope you'll follow me.
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Mathew's Baptism

With lots of coordination and changes of plans, we were able to have Mathew baptized this past weekend in Milesville. My little brother Ed lives in ND and works in the oil fields, so we had to make it a weekend he was home, since he is the godfather.

Steph, Ed's fiance and Ed were the godparents.

Here's a family picture with Paul's mom Leslie and Mikaela.

And we took one with Dad and Ann too. It was a late mass, 7:30PM, so these pictures were about 9, after the cake and cookies the church ladies served, so way too late for little girls. We did get a whole family picture of the Harty's that is in my flicker album with other pictures from the weekend as well.

Sunday morning we attempted a picture with grandpa, but only Mathew wanted to cooperate.

Grandma Ann and Mathew on Sunday too. He was in a good mood, while Mikaela was ready for a nap.


It was wonderful to have my Aunt Jane and Uncle Tom come down from Rapid City to join us. Paul's mom Leslie and her friend Steph came as well, so we had 4 full pews at mass, which doubled the size of the church. Both my brothers and their families were there, so we took our first family picture with everyone since the boys were born. It was so great to have everyone together, if only for a short time!

Ahhhh's

For the past couple weeks I've been busy completing hexie Ahhhh's. They are 3" finished on the side and so much fun to make. I can usually get one made in a day. I'm using Hoffman 1895 batiks in rich vibrant colors to make them. I just love how they are turning out. I started with the Beginners club over at Hillbilly Handiworks, but I've decided to do the Gotta have'em all club. They are so relaxing and I love the challenge of seeing the color placement.

The Yellow and blue one in the photo above is in honor of the SDSU Jackrabbits. I made it yesterday as we are playing in the Summit League tournament. Both the men and women made it to the finals. The women play our biggest in state rival USD and the men play our other huge rival NDSU. They are both sure to be awesome games.
This is number #7 Diamond Windows which I made on Friday.

This is my 1100 post! I honestly never thought when I started blogging 8 years ago it would grow to this. I am shocked at the changes that blogging has made since Jen and I started so long ago! It's amazing what a transformation the blog world has made in the quilting world. Jen and I were pioneers in quilt blogging at the time we met and I couldn't ask for a more awesome blog friend. Here's to the next 1000 posts!

Mathew is 3 Months Old

Mathew Paul turned 3 months old yesterday and he's been growing so much in the last few weeks. He's grown out of newborn diapers and he's close to outgrowing his 0-3 clothes.
Valentine's Day - 10 Weeks


11 Weeks



12 Weeks


3 Months/13 weeks

Another Finish!

I have my second finish for March already. I made this baby quilt top last month and then I quilted it on Saturday. I put the binding on Sat. night and got the hand sewing done this week during breaks. It's the Teacups pattern by Jaybird Quilts, but I changed the size up a bit, to use up the scraps I had. It uses the new Tumber Strip ruler from Creative Grids.

Productive Hexie Weekend

I had a very productive Hexie weekend. I spent the day Saturday ice fishing with my husband. He fished, I hexied. I finished basting 80+ of my sewing themed hexies, until the bag was too small to hold them.

I sewed together, Ahhhh's #3 & #2

I finished basting more of my buggy barn hexies too.



Last night we found out Paul's dad is coming for Mathew's baptism, so I whipped up this little wall hanging for him. I think he'll like having the family picture of us. I'm getting excited for this weekend.

I also quilted my teacups quilt and should finish the binding on it this afternoon. I'm having a productive week and it's only just begun.