BluePip Designs

I'm pleased to present the first Quilt Block Summer graduate: Ricochet!!  My quilt holders were all at school, so I had to do the best I could on my own to get a picture. This is my second all C+S top, and it's a lot more restrained than the first one.  I used Sprinkle in Jelly Bracelet as my background fabric, and then stuck to all blue and green fabrics to make my blocks. The fat quarters I used span the entire life of the Cotton + Steel line.  You can see all of them together in this patch I made for the back of the quilt - it's all the extra centers from the blocks on the front. My original plan was to make the back scrappy with different pink fat quarters, but then I realized I had almost enough Lucky Strikes Dime Store Dot Navy for the whole thing.  It fits so well with the front of the quilt that I decided to just use it all.  It wasn't my intention to make a double-sided quilt, but I did and it's one of my favorite backs ever! T...

My quilt block summer is over!  I was a little too ambitious with the number of projects started, but I made good progress on all of them so that's just a lesson learned.  I have 143 posts on my #quiltblocksummer hashtag and my actual block total is 301! Temperature Quilt 2018 There were 127 days in Quilt Block Summer, and I made a temperature block for each of them!  Sometimes a day or two late, but they always got done.  This added just over seven rows to my quilt. And the stragglers who aren't attached yet: Harry Potter Bookcase I added 12 blocks to my bookcase, doubling it in size.  I also got everything joined together! Here's the row I'm currently working on: 2018 Summer Sampler Another success and the backbone of the Quilt Block Summer timeline.  The last block is called Fish Rack and was the easiest and fastest block in the whole quilt.  I made the legs of my fish rack two-tone just so I didn't have to match the p...

Look, look, look! It's finally, actually finished!  This was one of my oldest works-in-progress and had been put away several times due to mental block. I still don't agree with all my choices but I'm so glad to have it off my list and done! I experimented with it by adding some hand-quilting.  I love the texture it gives the quilt so I'm adding "hand-quilt an entire quilt" to my "someday" list.  My favorite piece is still the rainbow. Another first for this quilt is the permanent hanging sleeve I put on the back.  This is going to be hung up over my cutting table (as soon as I find a rod I like to do so with) and it's a little too big for my normal process of safety pins and command hooks.  Putting on the sleeve was easier than I expected - please enjoy the artistic shot of the back my aspiring photographer took for me (we were shooting between rainstorms so I couldn't have him reshoot). The pattern for this is My Small Wo...

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary!  It's just about a week into the school year, and I am flying through my projects!  I am surprised at how quickly all my days are filling up though.  Not nearly as much free time as I thought I'd have, but that's okay - I'm definitely not bored. Temperature Quilt 2018 The nights feel like fall and we are sleeping with the windows open again, no matter how warm it gets during the day. Harry Potter Bookcase This is a double block - Crookshanks and the Sorting Hat!  The Sorting Hat's face is there but hard to see, exactly how I imagined it in my head when I first read the series.  Like trying to find a picture in the clouds. 2018 Summer Sampler Block 17 is the Chrysler Building in New York City.  Only one more block to go - this whole quilt-along has been so much fun!  I was using scraps for the center of my block so the diamonds don't match up in both halves, but just like last week, it...

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary!  The kids are back at school, the air feels like fall, and I'm declaring the next two weeks my "mom vacation" to do whatever I want!  After that it'll be time for my annual fall decluttering and cleaning (less fun, but satisfying when it's over). Temperature Quilt 2018 I was hoping to use my red pencil fabric for the first day of school, but temperatures are falling here so I had to settle for some pink scissors. Harry Potter Bookcase A big week for Harry Potter!  I only had to piece a potion bottle and a book, but those two pieces finished off the fourth bookshelf! 2018 Summer Sampler Block 16 is called Maois and fits in perfectly with the stripey blocks I'm making for #100Days100Blocks2018 this week.  I realized that I assembled it wrong right as I finished trimming the last side.  Grr.  I still think it looks good so I'm leaving it for now.  If it bugs me when I do the final assemb...

My kids go back to school on Tuesday and I have so many ideas of what I want to sew!  I'm letting myself dream a little bigger than normal, just because the time I have seems so endless (don't pop my bubble of happiness quite yet, please!).  But amidst all the new stuff I also want to finish up some of my lingering projects.  I'm actually hoping to get two of them done: the My Small World quilt that didn't quite get finished as part of my May goal (my only failure so far) and the first of my Quilt Block Summer project graduates, the Ricochet Quilt. I don't have an updated picture of the My Small World quilt, but it just needs a hanging sleeve (I intend to hang it permanently), binding, and a few small areas of hand quilting.  I can do it, right? But the actual goal I'm linking up for this month is to finish the Ricochet quilt.  I've got the top pieced already.  I need to piece a back from my collection of Cotton + Steel fat quarters, quilt, and bind t...