Jack and Jill

Hi everyone! Is it really the end of March? That must have happened when I wasn't looking. To be fair, this has been a hard month and I haven't been looking at a lot of things.  This week I finally wound up a very large, important project that has taken up a great deal of my time the past few months. I spent a day this week at another school out of state and gave *two* high stakes presentations on the same day.  It went well, and I am happy to have that behind me.  Maybe now I can focus on important things, like the best color to use with orange in a quilt.

I was so busy and then mentally used up this week that I didn't think I'd have a finish, but it turns out I have two! Here they are:

These are two baby quilts that I've been calling "Jack and Jill."  They are just about 35-1/2 inches square and are intended as donations to Jack's Basket through Sarah's Hands to Help challenge at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

These two little quilts are adapted from the infamous 'Quick Strippie" pattern at Mary Quilts. (You can find the free pattern HERE.)  I just made the pattern a bit smaller.  Mary is an absolute genius, because I cut these fabrics on Sunday before I got on the road, then stitched up one after I got back on Wednesday and one on Thursday.  I don't think it took even three hours to make up both of these.  Not difficult at all!

Both of these are made from about a half yard of some leftover fabrics.  The pink quilt uses up most of what I had left of some fabric I had originally purchased for a quilt backing.  I used it as a backing, but still had a couple yards left over and it's been here forever.  It's a hard print to use but works great here.

I still think the fabric is really pretty but I'm really happy to see it used up and in a happy little baby quilt.

The blue quilt uses a piece that I bought for a baby quilt, but never used because I made something else instead.  The fabric has all kinds of construction equipment, and the coordinating piece is nuts and bolts. Perfect for a baby boy.

I'm also glad to use up these two pieces!  The only real use for them is a baby quilt, don't you think?

I will quilt these up in a little bit.  Since they're strip quilts, I plan to just do straight line quilting on them.  I'm actually planning to quilt all of the donation quilts at once after I have them all finished.  I have one more to do and then that will be it for this year.

When I went out to take pictures of these little quilts, I found some happy little flowers poking through the dead leaves under the trees:

Those are some purple crocus, and I don't know if you can see these very well, but they are grape hyacinths:

I didn't plant any of these, but they make me happy!

For this weekend I'm planning to rest up and read some quilty blogs and then maybe buy a bunch of fabric.  I have some serious shelf space to fill!  Apparently I've been using fabric and not replacing it with more, so there are some gaps. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF, and Brag About Your Beauties.