Cute Baby Quilt to Hug and Kiss

This is the second of my dentist office quilts. I would have finished it two days ago but I had four classes of essays about King Lear to score over the weekend. Tomorrow I am scheduled to speak to two classes of sophomores, both under the same teacher, about writing effective responses to the prompts. I have been obsessing over this ever since the teacher, in his first year here and still very young, asked me to come in. His request was couched in such a way that my senses began to vibrate. "Maybe they will listen to you more than they listen to me." That seems unlikely since I will be more or less like a substitute teacher. Everyone remembers how they treated substitutes, right?

Anyway, student skills are way down. That isn't just in the mechanics, the sort of stuff that used to be part of an elementary education such as spelling and grammar, but in the critical thinking part. I have worked for this same school doing the same task for over twenty years now and students used to have a deeper understanding of what they read. They weren't always on target with their arguments, and they frequently had grammar problems, but the depth and breadth of the problems now is pitiful.

Once again on a happier note, here is the Hugs and Kisses quilt.

 Most of these fabrics are new, primarily from Moda, but the alert viewer will also see some much older fabrics--the two bug prints--that are about 25 years old now. I believe they are both Hoffman prints but I am not positive. Of course it is called Hugs and Kisses because of the repeated XO motif.