BluePip Designs

This was our first "normal" week of the summer - no traveling, appointments, or out-of-town visitors. We all enjoyed some much-needed downtime, which for me meant plenty of time in my sewing room! Temperature Quilt 2018 This is still my favorite project and the one I am most eager to work on every morning.  I used novelty prints to represent our days in Boston, but the colors of the blocks are still based on our home city. Harry Potter Bookcase No new block this week, but I did make a minor repair (removed and replaced a fabric I accidentally used twice) and joined all three shelves together.  This was my June goal so it got its own blog post earlier this week. 2018 Summer Sampler I finished this beast of a block - and I love it!  Thanks to everyone who posted on the hashtag to give me the idea to put my accent fabrics in the center.  I also rotated my center 45 degrees to give it a little more punch. Ricochet Quilt Block six!  I think this ...

I was a little worried that my June goal  was a little too easy, but it turns out I was right on the money.  Between end-of-school-year activities, vacation, and extended family visiting for a wedding, my sewing time really suffered.  But unlike May , I did finish! The first part of my goal was to make the Monster Book of Monsters.  There were a lot of tiny parts and a little bit of seam ripping, but in the end he looks adorably terrifying. The second part of my goal was to get all my blocks sewn together into one piece.  I've been making the rows as I go along, but I needed to take the time to cut my brown bookcase fabric to join the rows together.  It's amazing how much a difference three strips of plain brown fabric can make! I'm linking up my completed goal at Elm Street Quilts .

Quilt Block Summer is on hiatus this week due to our family vacation, but I was able to take photos of  my finished Release the Kraken quilt before we left!  Of course the day we went it was super windy, but I think I still got a couple of good shots. Piecing the back was almost as much work as the front.  I had bought a length of the pink boats from Alison Glass's Diving Board collection , but when I unfolded it, I didn't like how perfectly the boats lined up. I ended up cutting it into strips and off-setting everything and I'm much happier with it!  The striped fabric in the middle is a half-yard cut that I've had for a long time - the selvage says it's copyright 2014. I quilted this one in matching colors, with lots of googling to see how things looked in reality to get ideas.  Here are some close-ups in the order that I quilted them.  The background is just swirls - my favorite free-motion quilting design! I used m...

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary! Temperature Quilt 2018 My husband had a milestone birthday this week.  He was hoping for an orange block and I was hoping for a red one (I have red bicycles and red tea cups, two of his favorite things), but instead he was stuck firmly in the middle with pink.  I did my best with what's in my stash - we always have donuts for breakfast on birthdays. Harry Potter Bookcase What's the best thing to do with a block that has a million tiny pieces?  Add a few more, of course!  I gave my Monster Book of Monster eyeballs and it was worth the extra effort.  This block didn't come together easily (due to several mistakes on my part) but he's done and I'm pleased. 2018 Summer Sampler This week's block is beautiful, but intricate.  I had three intense paper-pieced blocks on my list this week and this one unfortunately got the short end of the stick. Ricochet Quilt I only had to rip out one seam to ...

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary!  Today is the last day of school for my big kids so summer is at full blast starting tomorrow. Temperature Quilt 2018 Another special week - my oldest son turned ten!  He choose the UFO to represent his birthday and I love it because this is fabric he originally chose (at the store) for an apron I made him when he was two.  I am definitely loving the more spring-like temperatures we've had this week - full summer heat can hold off for a bit longer as far as I'm concerned. Harry Potter Bookcase I officially made the Monster Book of Monsters my June OMG goal this week, and I was worried that I was thinking too small.  But it took me three days just to get his bottom jaw pieced together so I think it was a wise choice! 2018 Summer Sampler Block four is called Giza and it's another paper-pieced block!  It has nice big pieces to contrast with the tiny ones in my Harry Potter Bookcase.  The mid...

After my near miss of finishing May's goal, I'm hesitant to set a big sweeping goal for this month.  My kids start summer vacation on Thursday and we've got a lot of family stuff planned.  What I've really got is a bunch of micro goals with my Quilt Block Summer efforts, so for June I'm just choosing the largest of my micro goals (macro micro?) to link up. I want to finish the Monster Book of Monsters block for my Harry Potter Quilt of Doom and then sew the first three rows together.  I like to join as I go along so that when I'm finished I have a quilt and not a pile of blocks.  Plus it makes moving the pieces around my sewing room easier. Here's to summer fun with a little bit of sewing thrown in! I'm linking up my goal with Elm Street Quilts .

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary!  I got a little behind this week as I spent most of Memorial Day weekend outdoors with my family instead of alone in my sewing room.  But that's the point of Quilt Block Summer - relaxing and sewing when I can without pressure. Temperature Quilt 2018 These blocks are the easiest to make so of course I kept up with them.  I hit a couple of milestones this week.  First, I finished the eighth row in my quilt! Second, we hit 100 degrees on Memorial Day!  100!  That is so crazy for May in Minnesota!  The low on January 1st was -15 degrees, so we've had quite the range in the last 150 days.  I debated between using brown and black to signify this, but it's so hot in May I wanted to keep my options open for the really hot days in July and August.  It was nice to have a real spring day with lower temperatures yesterday. Harry Potter Bookcase Nothing to show here this week. ...

My goal for this month was to finish the My Small World quilt top I finished piecing in January of 2017, more than sixteen months ago. I started by pulling it out of the drawer - even the picture I posted with my original goal post was old.  After a good pressing, I got the quilt basted and sky quilted. That was the easy part.  Next, I started quilted the buildings below, switching my thread color to match or coordinate with each block.  Sometimes I could do several blocks in one pass and sometimes I only did part of a block with one color before having to break.  I prefer to bury my threads as I go along.  It makes the quilting take a little longer, but then when I'm done, I'm done.  The pins you can see in this picture are reminders to come back and quilt that spot. I also experimented with hand-quilting selected parts of the quilt.  I've only done this twice before and both times it was on very small wall hangings (my Moda Matchbox q...

Welcome to this week's Quilt Block Summer Summary!  So far, so good with staying on track. Temperature Quilt 2018 One block away from another full row!  The cardinal represents my grandmother.  My five-year-old picked the last two print fabrics for me. Harry Potter Bookcase "There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words." - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 2018 Summer Sampler I love how this block looks rounded, especially when you rotate it ninety degrees!  I'm also trying to use the white as more of an accent color so that the blocks will stand out from the quarter-square triangle units in the final layout.  I may be limited by how much fabric I have, but I'll live dangerously as long as possible. Ricochet Quilt This week's block features Cut It Out in Navy from Rashida Coleman-Hale's Paper Cuts collection . Trinket Quilt The second block of this...

My Quilt Block Summer has begun!  I'm not going to lie - it was a bit of a rush starting four new quilts in a single week!  As of today, I'm done with preschool runs forever and I've got one kid on summer vacation, so it feels like summer here.  I'm hoping to keep these posts short and sweet and full of pictures, but for week one I'm going to ramble a little bit and explain each of the projects. Temperature Quilt 2018 My temperature quilt is a daily quilt that I've been working on since January to track the temperatures in our city (even if we are out of town, I use our home temperature in the quilt).  I'm 136 days in and still loving it!  I was thrilled to find an orange floral fabric in my stash to represent Mother's Day - the random stash builders from my Sew Sampler box have helped me so many times: Harry Potter Bookcase This is a quilt that has been on my "to-make" list for a long time.  With the exception of the ...