Purple Pineapple Blossom Quilt

February ??, 2015

It's done!

A timeline:

Early April, 2014: start collecting purple fabrics. Find an online Logo interpreter and write some code to draw quilts made out of identical blocks. Find the Pineapple Blossom pattern and determine that it is both simple enough to be easy to make many many blocks, and complicated enough to hold my interest while making many many blocks. Write more code so I can get an idea of what my purple pineapple blossom quilt would look like. Show several options of logo-generated quilts to my husband, since he will be sleeping under this forever too. He signs off on Pineapple Blossom.
Late April: Discover that my stash is not nearly big enough to support a scrappy queen-sized quilt. Persevere anyway. Start building reputation as That Crazy Purple Woman at Cambridge Quilt Shop.
4/14: First block done!
4/15: Discover bug in first block. Curse a lot. Fix it. Also accept that of the light purples in it, 2 actually read as dark, and 2 are just too gray to be used in this quilt, despite the fact that they were the closest to light purple I could find in my local quilt shop. Curse more.
4/20: 10 blocks done, of a speculated 63.
4/27: 16 blocks done.
5/18: Nasty horseback riding accident. Spend a week on the couch on hard-core pain medication. Working on quilt is too hard/painful/uncomfortable for about 2 months.
5/23-6/3: Go to Hawaii on vacation. Find amazing quilt shop (Kapaia Stitchery, Lihue, Kauai) more than 5,000 miles from where I live. Bring back more purple fabric.
7/24: 32 blocks done. As originally calculated I am now half done the blocks!
8/23: 52 blocks done. Since our new refrigerator is 1/4" too wide to fit through the door of our kitchen, but the old refrigerator has already been hauled away, there is this big open space in the kitchen to try laying out the existing blocks. Begin to suspect that 9x7 blocks and the duvet we already have will be too small and 9x8 is probably a better idea. More cursing.
9/14: How on earth do I have so many strips cut, none of which are acceptable somehow for the last few blocks??? Start planning baby quilt to help use up leftover purple. The whole reason I am making the big purple quilt (duvet cover, really) is that we're hoping to have a baby soon, and when we do, we'll move to the bedroom with the bright purple wall. And wouldn't it be cute if our kid had a quilt that was made of scraps from the one we sleep under every night? Post a preliminary picture to Facebook, with hidden-meaning comment "probably a baby quilt for someone whose parents like purple." Several friends who either have very young babies or are pregnant point out that they quite like purple.

9/22-9/27: While husband is away, move most furniture out of the living room (the only place in our house where I can lay out all the blocks) and attempt to find a layout of the 72 blocks that matches my constraints -- I want each light or dark "diamond" to not use the same fabric more than once. After most of the week, suck it up and write a computer program to lay it out for me. This requires first coming up with unique names for the 70 different purple fabrics in this quilt. Actually have the revelation "Wait, I don't have to be smart, I have a computer!" Computer program takes a minute or two to check ~3 million layouts before finding one that works. Be grateful for modern technology. Since this is the second time I have had to do this, resolve to, in future, always assume that I'm going to have to write code for layout, and start doing the appropriate record keeping at the beginning. Each block is assigned a number. My program spits out the final layout:

       0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7 
   -------------------------------------
      _________________________________
    | |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |
 0  |  13 |68 |29 | 7 |63 |32 |60 |45 |
    | |/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|
    | |\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|
 1  | |64 |21 |49 |31 |55 | 1 |70 |34 |
    | |__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|
    | |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |
 2  | |54 |43 |57 |41 |46 |33 |69 |27 |
    | |/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|
    | |\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|
 3  | | 4 |11 |36 |52 |24 |56 |14 |47 |
    | |__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|
    | |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |
 4  | |42 |19 |15 |71 | 9 |22 |50 |26 |
    | |/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|
    | |\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|
 5  | |18 |62 | 3 |25 | 6 |44 |20 |23 |
    | |__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|
    | |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |
 6  | |10 |39 |17 | 0 | 8 |48 |51 |12 |
    | |/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|
    | |\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|
 7  | |53 |59 | 5 |35 |58 |65 |67 |40 |
    | |__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|
    | |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |  /|\  |
 8  | |66 |38 |28 |61 | 2 |37 |30 |16 |
    | |/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|/__|__\|

Early October: make most of baby quilt top. It still needs borders. Wonder what to do with the scraps leftover from the little project I'm doing to get rid of the scraps from my big project.
10/16-10/25: With Chris (husband) away again, move all the living room furniture, lay out blocks in their final configuration, add sashing that doesn't duplicate any fabrics in each diamond, and frantically piece the blocks together (how is Web the Top not a square dance call??) while binge-watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix.
11/8: Accept that there are no standard sizes for duvets. Commit to one common-ish size by buying one.
Early November: start piecing borders out of the leftover bits cut off from the corners of each block. Get pretty frustrated because they are more irregular than I wish they were.
Late November: sign up for Cambridge Quilt Shop's block of the month. Choose the batik colorway because I need to work on something not monochromatic. Revel in the fact that my blocks are not purple.
11/21-11/23: Spend most of a square dance weekend inexplicably tired, squaring up almost 300 corner artifacts instead of dancing. Also, discover that I'm pregnant. Baby quilt now has a recipient.
Early December: Spend lots of time trying to get ahold of very wide black fabric for the back and borders. Sew one black inner border on (a 7-foot seam). Realize that that fabric is not as wide as advertised and doesn't actually match the fabric I have located that is wide enough. Become cranky and disillusioned.
12/6: Have first ultrasound and discover that we are having twins. Have momentary freakout: OH CRAP DO I NEED TO MAKE A SECOND PURPLE BABY QUILT NOW?? Wonder if I will actually have time to finish the big quilt and the baby quilt, in addition to all of the preparations we will need to do before next summer. Friends suggest making a very simple second baby quilt. I am hesitant to do so because I want the two baby quilts to be about the same degree of difficulty. Wonder if this is merely the first in a long long series of times where I don't do as good a job as I'd like because I have two small children.
December 2014, January 2015: Totally wiped out by first-trimester fatigue. Come home from work every day and immediately curl up in bed with ipad and continue binge-watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix. Completely intimidated by the thought of having to finish the quilts.
February 2015: Out of Gilmore Girls. Guess I'd better work on the quilts again. Unclear on whether I actually have more energy now that I'm into the 2nd trimester, or it's just the placebo effect. Decide I don't really care.