BluePip Designs

Now that the rush of preparing for the quilt show  and making two baby quilts ( one and two ) is over, I'm filling my calendar up with new quilt-alongs. I was looking for a photo of the first mystery quilt-along that I did for an Instagram post and realized that it pre-dates my blog.  So today I present to you, the Midnight Mystery Quilt ! My love of quilt-alongs started early, and while this wasn't the first one that I ever did, it was the first mystery one.  I started it in July of 2015 and finished it in March of 2016.  According to my official quilt tracking spreadsheet, it is the 38th quilt that I ever started.  I remember reading the fabric requirements and instantly deciding that I wanted to use both pink and orange fabrics and then just going for it, but not much else about the actual construction process or how I picked the final fabrics. It's also one of the first quilts that I quilted myself and this photo of the back shows some of the custom quilting I did.  I

I love a baby shower because it's a fun opportunity to make a tiny-sized quilt for a brand-new adorable human.  This quilt is for my cousin's new child coming sometime next month. The pattern is called Shark Bay and I was inspired by this toy fish that was on her baby registry. This close-up picture shows the colors of the stripes better too.  For once, I didn't overquilt the quilt - I stitched in the ditch on both sides of the separator rows between the rows of sharks and then pulled out my ruler foot and my wavy ruler to do the waves in the stripes.  It was far easier to do the ruler across a whole row than it was to do it in the tiny trees ! The back is a sea of pastel fish swimming in a peachy red ocean and the binding is a navy solid from my stash - a nice change from my normal black.  This quilt has a lovely drape and I'm sure baby and parents will love it!

I feel like I just finished writing my Q1 check-in post so seeing Yvonne's post on my blog feed was a bit of a surprise to me - the last three months have just flown by.  Most of my sewing time was spent focusing on my BluePip Designs business .  BluePip is starting to feel more like an actual small business venture and less of a part-time hobby and I'm happy with that!  I'm also making time to sew non-business things so that my hobby doesn't fall by the wayside.  Right now, I am happy with the balance I have between the two sides of my quilting. This time around, I'll start by talking about my professional goals and then go into my personal goals: Goal: Finish Creating Paper Patterns  ✅ I created paper patterns for Windsuit , Zephyr , and Bernie's Mittens .  I started with  Windsuit  because it was freshest in my mind (thus the easiest to reformat), then  Bernie's Mittens  because it's a shorter pattern, and finally Zephyr

It always perplexes me how all the summer activities start immediately as soon as the summer ends, but then by August there is nothing going on.  My kids are typical teenagers, so I get up at my normal school year time and have an hour or two to myself before they are awake enough to hold a conversation.  June was an exciting month for me because I   attended the MN Quilt show as a lecturer  (yes, all my print patterns were ready to go on time) and I also broke my high school bowling record by bowling a 172! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 12 WIP List at end of month: 13 Untouched in 2024: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished None. Quilts Started Layer Cake Lily - A new shortcut quilt for the Fat Quarter Shop .  Secret sewing for now but the pattern will be released in August and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you then! Quilt Progress (6 WIPs touched) Lemon Blossom Mystery Quilt  - I was behind a little bit on this quilt along, but I pus

Last weekend was the Minnesota Quilters Quilt Show in Duluth, MN, and I journeyed up there with some of my family to take it in.  Once again, my guild put on a fabulous exhibit in the non-judged section and I was lucky enough to have two quilts included this time around.  Last year, the theme was Whisper Quilts and this year it was "What is a Modern Quilt?" Mother even got the place of honor right next to the sign explaining the exhibit!  As I finished Mother, I felt it was more of a display quilt than an everyday quilt, so I was thrilled to see it hanging at a show.   Each of the quilt cards had the artist statement that I wrote followed by an explanation written by the guild of what made the quilt modern.  The card on Mother had a mistake - the quilt design is by Tara Lee Quiltery .  The teardrop idea and themes are all hers, I just redesigned some of the interiors to suit myself.  I credited her when I submitted the design, but I wasn't asked to proof the card prior

A very old and dear friend is welcoming their first child next month and I am so happy for them!  I asked if they had a theme picked out for their nursery and they told me they were planning on doing a sloth theme.  I knew immediately what I was going to make for them: I already own the  Elizabeth Hartman sloth pattern  and it was fun to revisit it!  I've used it twice before, first as a pillow in a swap and then as a centerpiece in my modified Gypsy Wife quilt .  Both of those sloths were sewn around 2017 and it's interesting to see the difference seven years makes.  I have a different machine now and my piecing is better; this one looks more like the one on the cover of the pattern than either of the other two.  The picture below captures the true colors of the quilt better. I followed the pattern for the sloth itself exactly as written, but I extended the tree trunk up and down to make it a little taller and then added some side borders to make it wider.  I backed the quilt

The last full month of the school year is always a little bittersweet, and this year is a big one: my youngest is finishing up elementary school, the middle is finishing middle school, and the oldest is getting his driver's license next week. That's a lot of big changes! Obviously at their ages they don't need  me to supervise them closely, but they are a lot of fun and I like hanging out with them so I take advantage of as much time as they will give me. If you guessed that this means I was trying to wrap things up before the summer you'd be wrong: I started three quilts (and finished one) and two cross-stitch projects. Now I have lots of fun things to work on! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 10 WIP List at end of month: 12 Untouched in 2024: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Baby Sloth Quilt (May 2024) Quilts Started Fado Road  - My newest personal project now that the Solids HST quilt is done. Fun fact: this is the first

This quilt has a mouthful of a name! I tend to either call my quilts by the pattern name or a descriptive element in them, and this time it just happens to be a long one.  My eye was drawn to the bold half-square triangle (HST) border and it was a challenge because I made the whole thing from the solids in my stash! This is a free pattern from Robert Kaufman  by Elise Lea , written to feature many, many different shades of Kona solids.  I have a fairly large solids stash of leftover solids from various projects, so I got out my Kona color card and went to work finding the best possible match to each one.  They definitely aren't all Konas, but they do play well together to make this beautiful quilt. Oddly enough, for being the part of the quilt that attracted me the most, the border is what gave me the most trouble.  I pieced the quilt top entirely in the month of February, but it took me all of March to make the borders.  Unlike the main body, exact colors weren't given, just i