The Long-Awaited Reveal!

So, um, somehow I let this blog languish for five weeks. FIVE. That is pretty bad, even for a dingbat, baby-brained, ultra-busy person such as myself. Consider this my apology: I feel so sad I have been a bad blogger, I have destashed about half my fabric.

It is in my Etsy shop. Go forth! Browse! Buy! Tell your cashed-up friends!

If you are in Australia, those work out to be below AMERICAN fabric prices per yard (and most of them are actually meters masquerading as yards, which means BONUS FABRIC). Unfortunately I cannot do much about the shipping costs; they are what they are, and I still rounded down, but the bundles are nice and fat and the deals are sweet. Get this stuff out of my house. I have three FQ sets arriving this week. And I missed having space to move around in my sewing room. It was getting cray-cray, y'all.

So.

On to what I did manage to do last month while I was neglecting you, oh blog I love!

I finished up the Rainbow Parterre Quilt. The pattern comes from Homespun 87 which I found on eBay, but I'll level with you: I saw this image on Pinterest and traced it back to the original author of the pattern. Then I couldn't wait for the pattern to arrive, so I drew it up in TouchDraw on my iPad mini myself. (Lynne aka Ms Lily Lalique has some fabulous tutorials here.)

Once it was colored the way I wanted it to be colored, I went to work. Chose my stacks...

And began to cut. And sew. And trim. And cut and sew and trim some more.

Along the way I developed a nifty little system for accurately piecing blocks. Because this quilt was in a block configuration of 24 x 24, I knew I could divide it up into 36 16-patch blocks.Which made the entire 96" plus quilt top into something suddenly extremely manageable. I got so quick I could do a block in 20 minutes, start to finish!

Anyway, long story short, cut the pattern into manageable bits, label the back, use Blu-tac or poster putty or what-have-you to stick it right in front of your face where you can't screw it up, lay it out, then sew. It does make it quicker, and aside from the first mistake I made, it was a perfect quilt top. I literally did not screw up, and I can only thank my system.

Now, I was going to wedge this thing into my Bernina 440QE and try and quilt it myself (!) when my friend Danielle (do you know Danielle? She is amazeballs, go read her blog) suggested I ask Jeannette over at The Quilting Platypus if she could longarm it. I was a bit afraid to ask because, well, I only had a week and a half, but Jeannette messaged me and said "I can do it for you in three days!" AND SHE DID!

It is really nice that she let me queue-jump, just because she loved the quilt. I had never sent a quilt out before (me, the girl who can do it all!) but this was just so easy. I was not relishing trying to squeeze in what would have been about 20 hours of quilting into a toddler- and puppy-filled life. Mr Poppleton chose the pattern (Rosebud, I believe, soft to give the quilt some movement and round to contrast with the sharp geometrics) and I got the binding attached at one of our Sydney Modern Quilt Guild meetings, then sewed it on over six hours. (I was a very bad parent that day. Piper and I watched a LOT of Timmy Time.)

This is us, binding. She thinks she's helping!

We delivered it as soon as I finished the binding. (I couldn't wait!) I know my mother in law pretty well by now and I knew taking a huge elaborate present to her birthday dinner (at a restaurant) would be quite a lot of effort and embarassment, so we took it over a few days early. That suited everyone just fine, except I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing!

Anyway. She loved it. That's the main thing.

And last weekend, I FINALLY remembered to ask her to bring it over, and I FINALLY have a picture of the whole dang thing.

It's 96" square, so amply queen/king sized.I deliberately kept it very heavy on the blues. I put a lot of different textures in there - so Mendocino right up against Hope Valley, for example, which are both quilting-weight cottons but with very different hands - because I know my mother in law is the kind of person who appreciates texture. Some things I kept deliberately symmetrical (the inner orange/brown ring, the outer pinks) and some were happy accidents (a large-ish triangle in the lower right that ended up being all the same fabric in just that quadrant). I played very fast and loose with value. The ONLY thing I wish I'd done better was fussy cut and added more scraps. By the end of my cutting I was so tired (and on my second of FOUR total rotary cutter blades) that I just went "oh, let's use these five colors" when I should have said "thirty colors". But it doesn't matter, because it is done, and beautiful, and loved.

I mean, look, it's a stash quilt (the only thing I bought was the binding because it was perfect), and the colors took a while, and I love all the negative space. It was a big stretch for me, getting away from square patterns, and I'm so proud I managed to wrangle this pattern into something fabulous. I want to make all of the things now. SIGH.

So, Rainbow Parterre quilt. What else has been happening?

Oh yes, we had a rather frantic few weeks at the Sydney Modern Quilt Guild trying to get the top of our group quilt assembled. We managed to get (over two days!) all the blocks sashed with white and the colored strips, and then at last weekend's meeting, we decided on the final layout, and added the white sashing and colored posts. Literally, this baby is ready to be put together. It is my job to trim and square these blocks for assembly. We will probably have another bee at some point, or we might do some work over Easter for those who hide out during public holidays. (Or is that just my family, hehe.)

Anyway, the Dream Team:

That's Jill, Tash, me, and Selina. What gorgeous girls. Thanks for spending nine hours with me. You are all totally the prettiest people I know.

I will endeavor to blog about last weekend over on the SydMQG website. Sometime soon. Before I give birth. Gah.

OH! And I sent off the form to exhibit my own quilt. For my first "big" show quilt I wanted to do something quite simple but striking. I can't seem to get away from HSTs, though...

This photo the quilt top is only laid out. I have the blocks sewn into rows, but haven't put it together yet. I plan on quilting this one myself. I even made up the binding already. :)

Oh! And I also did my bee blocks and sent them off already. They were for Charlotte this month. She sent three fabrics (Konas White, Slate, and Bright Pink) and said "send me back a 12.5" block!" I ended up making these ones:

It was quite hard to let those go, I tell you. Since she just had a baby girl (like two weeks ago!) I indulged myself and sent her a vintage children's pattern and a little bapron as well. I hope she likes them. :)

On the home front...Piper has learned how to climb things. Like her high chair. (She elects to climb OVER her tray, which is both terrifying and...nevermind, I am now remembering how danger-esque my sister Janaka was...there was NO method of near-death she didn't attempt as a small child. Piper is just adventurous.) Piper is eating a lot better, and knows how to slither into and out of her chair when it's time to eat, and sometimes will slither in as a way of TELLING me she's hungry. (Then she just sits there. Staring. Resentfully. I have heard her ask for "eskit" and "lunn" before so I often just stare back at her and ask her if she would like to tell me something. No response.) She can say "up!" and "Daddy" and "Timmy" (um) and "Mwa" which is kisses, and sometimes "Mama" when she is feeling particularly upset. If she hurts herself she unleashes a string of sounds that is a LOT like a sentence, but is basically nonsense, but her tone is spot-on. (She gets angry that she was hurt and she is mad at whatever hurt her and can I just fix it, okay, now put me down.) She can kick a soccer ball and shout "GOAL!" and tells the dog ALL THE TIME that she is a "good girl". She asks for "Ooby" (Ruby, her dolly) sometimes. She constantly says "tickle tickle" when doing anything - taking her shoes off, touching her bellybutton, etc. She always shouts "GADDAD!" when we go down Nanna and Granddad's driveway. She can say Nanna but, like Mama, rarely does. She can say "did it!" and "yay!" as well. She likes to imitate sneezing, snorting (we sometimes watch Peppa Pig too), and coughing when she hears it. And still grins when she sneezes. She climbs up on her bathroom stool to brush her teeth (and play in the sink, actually) and at shower-time, if you hand clothes to her, she will put them in the hamper (and her nappy in the rubbish bin). She has figured out how to change the water pressure from the overhead sprayer to the wand and often steals the water in the shower. Tsk. We recently bought her kid-sized cleaning toys (broom, mop, dust-pan and mini-broom) and she uses them all correctly. In fact, when I mop, she goes around behind me and "mops" too. Precious. She has also discovered textas. Nanna has whiteboard that Piper is allowed to play with, only the textas look exactly the same as my (permanent!) markers, so I had to hide all my markers up high once she figured out they were there. (My poor house. Sigh.) I let her draw on the grey walls with chalk, though, since it just rubs off, and she LOVES the freedom of that. She has also gotten a lot better at concentrating on tasks - she can sit and play blocks for longer periods of time, even up to an hour, and not get bored.

We have engaged our lovely friend Kat to come and look after Piper a few hours a week, so on Mondays and Fridays we have Kat Days, where Mama disappears into the back of the house and Piper gets some one-on-one time with someone who is just there to play with her. I am so grateful for Kat, honestly, because I always slow right down when I am pregnant, and this way I can get a lot done without feeling too neglectful. This also helps Piper adjust to the new baby: Kat Days wll stay the same once the new baby comes, as will swimming and playgroup, so the routine will not alter too drastically.

Pancakes is getting so big. She's still biting a lot, but we finally fenced in the back garden so she has LOTS of room to play and that seems to help a lot. It's really a relief I can just open the back door and let her out in the morning. We are still working on getting her NOT to wee on the dining room floor but she just loves that one spot. It's a tough break. But she is a joy and so cute and wiggly. I try and take pictures but literally they are always blurry. ALWAYS. She is just like Piper, wiggly and crazy and cute and fun. :)

And Mr Poppleton is reading and blogging about fountain pens and doing his usual hyper-intelligent pottering around, putting up with my insufferable questions like "do you think this fabric would go with this" and "what if I just bought TWO yards of Essex Yarn-Dyed Linen from Amanda" and "would you please make me some ice cream?" Because he is the best husband ever, he has also been very patient with poor, pregnant me, as I move slower and slower in these late weeks.

Bean (Bump, Slowy, the "inside" baby) is growing apace. Really, I just can't wait to meet this little one. I want to have a newborn again. I am a little worried about the adjustment for Piper - she is so very routine-oriented that when Mr Poppleton took a week holiday and was at home, she was constipated and her naps disappeared and she threw actual tantrums, and SHE LIKES DADDY - but it was always going to be a change. And I'd rather have a rough start than for her to have no siblings at all. That just sounds lonely. She will be so happy in about a YEAR when there is someone to play with all the time. :)

One last thing before I tuck myself in for the night - we use Reeder on our iPhone, iPad, iMac, and MacBook Air (shhh, we need them all for different things) and have heard that they will be introducing a fix/patch to accommodate Google's VERY POOR DECISION to stop Google Reader. If you haven't tried it before, it's a great little app, and I really like it. (I can use it, and I have zero patience with things that take a while to learn.) So there's a thought. I'm not sure what service they'll connect to, or anything really, because I depend on Mr Poppleton to tell me all of this stuff. He is very good. I'll go by what he recommends.

Anyway, goodnight my lovelies, and hopefully I will see you soon - how about on WIP Wednesday? :)

Cheers

Penny xx