A Week of Quilts- Day Four: The Copycat Picnic Playmat

Hallo. Miss me? Somehow yesterday got lost. VERY lost. I was still trying to find myself and those missing hours most of today. Hmph. But in the middle of the madness, I did take out the next quilt and snap some photos. So there's that. 

If you're just popping by, I've been attempting to blog a Week of Quilts. Here are the other posts from the week:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

And though I missed a day, everything will work out just fine since after today  I only have two more to blog and that can be Saturday/Sunday, which ends the week, ta-da, everything neatly tied in a bow.  

Aside: I'm listening to Tori Amos' "Tear in Your Hand". Anyone? Anyone? GOSH that song evokes emotions and memories and is a great soundtrack to my tumultuous PPD guts tonight. 

Aside: I'm feeling a bit un-super and a bit raw today. Most of the week, actually. Hormones a-ragin', making it hard for me to stay upbeat. just keepin' it real and telling you guys--- I do NOT always manage to do this life thing gracefully. Sometimes I just DO IT TO GET IT DONE, ya know? And that's okay. A few bad days with the "push through them" attitude, and  pretty soon the clouds break, sun comes back in, and we're back on track. So yeah. Cloudy over here for the moment. 

Actually, perfect moment to show by FAR my most colorful quilty project. This is the Copycat Picnic Playmat, directly inspired by the blogger Emilie of Plucky Momo.

  

Best part is, the post I link you to above is a TUTORIAL. So if you're feeling like digging into a kind of time-consuming project, she's given you a great place to start. Most of the other quilts I'm blogging about this week are simple and pretty painless-- something most beginners could manage. But this one is a bit trickier. I went my own direction with a few of the activity wedges, so it took some innovating and some experimenting to get things made and appliqued on. If you love the idea but don't need all the doo-dads, a beginner could still manage to make a simple circle quilt with 8 fat quarters and no embellishments. 

Anyway. So. This is mine. Copycat, and so so cheerful. 

 Here are some closeups of each activity I included:

Section 1: This tree is intended to be a "family tree". There are clear vinyl squares where I meant to print up little pictures of our family and tuck them in. It's never happened. Oops. The tree is still cute, yes?

Section 2: Artist's Palette- The paintbrush is movable and tucks into an elastic holder. 

Section 3: A yo-yo caterpillar- yo-yos are fabric gathered circles, and have a fun texture, so this is a tactile block. 

Section 4: Crinkly Butterflies- The wings flap up and they have crinkly material inside. 

Section 5: Ruffle rainbow- with super soft furry clouds and fun ruffles for the rainbow arcs. 

Section 6: fluffy sheep, button eyes. 

Section 7: felt and satin flowers with ribbon and ric-rac taggie stems and leaves. 

And below, Section 8: the book for holding books. This is made from Naugahyde and canvas, and I designed it to look like a book, but also to be able to hold a couple of small board books inside of it. The title and the "page lines" are machine-stitched on.

 I'd made this for Lucy for her first Christmas, December 2011. She got lots of good use out of it, and I loved seeing her play and roll around on it. So when Quinn came along, I was tickled to have more reason to use it. So how does the baby feel about this awesomely vivid, entertaining, stimulating, cute, handmade activity playmat? 

Huh. 

Well. 

Maybe in a few more months we'll try again. 

Til then, check out the way this folds up and ties... portability all the way, baby. 

(In all fairness to poor Quinn, he fell asleep sitting up just minutes after those photos. Kid was TIRED, y'all. Mean mama, making him wait for his nap...)

I've moved on to Toto songs on iTunes as I wrap up this post. Someone stop me. This is getting absurd. 

Also, I fully expected that I'd be able to easily manage to bind Quinn's baby quilt by the end of this Quilt Week, in order to feature it as the last post of the week. But yeah.... there it sits, unbound. CURSE YOU, LIFE! CURSE YOU, HORMONES! *shaking fist at sky*

But there's still 48 more hours. Maybe I can make magic happen. 

Til then, these 80's tunes and I are gonna go veg on Facebook for a minute. 

Happy weekend to all!