March Madness

It's been two weekends since my last post. (Sounds like the Catholic thing where they say it's been two weeks since my last confession) Last weekend was the big camporee for the Girl Scouts. That required quite a bit of planning and work on my part, and quilting took a back seat for a while. So did house and yard work, so that has taken of bit of catch up and recovery work. It was a nice weekend though, and I think the girls enjoyed themselves. This weekend was the camporee for the Boy Scouts, which was Kurt's job, leaving me home to work on the catching up. It was finally nice enough to venture out into the yard, and I spent 8 solid hours out there cutting out the dead foliage. This winter took a big toll on our landscaping, I can already see some of what is lost, but I think some of it will come back with a little patience. I'm exhausted now, with lots of sore muscles to remind me of my hard work.
Last week at school was our big accreditation visit, so there was a bit of effort needed there as well. That seems to have gone well, though it was a bit stressful for everyone to have lots of visitors traipsing about. There is only a week left until spring break, and that includes half a day on Friday as well as all of the 1oth graders gone on a college visit for one of the days. Not many teaching days amongst all of that, but I'll get as much in as I can.
There are two ladies at work getting ready to have babies any minute, so I decided to take some time this weekend to work on baby quilts. One is going to be girl, so I chose pink and green for that. I based it on a stripy quilt that I designed for the Girl Scout nursing home project a couple of years ago. I think it is soft and feminine, though Kurt thinks it looks like something for a little old lady. (Sometimes I wonder why I keep asking him what he thinks -- he can be brutal). The other is based on a pattern that I saw in Quiltmaker magazine and uses strip sets and four patches surrounding squares of novelty fabrics. I used 2 inch strips instead of the 2.5 inches in the pattern, and increased the size of the center squares as well. I think I changed the corners a bit too, though I don't have the pattern here to check. Looking at the photo, I'm thinking I could have made them a bit larger still to be equal in size to the total size of the 16 patches formed where all the corner squares meet. I've got the blocks put together now, though they aren't in the pictures. Now I've just got to find something for the back and get them all layered up. They aren't large, so it should take long to get them quilted and bound.