BluePip Designs

I love a good sewing surprise - I've done swaps, subscription boxes, and Advent calendars in the past - but last year I was intrigued by a new premise: Sugaridoo was going to send a project packaged as an Advent calendar.  Each day, we'd open the package to get the supplies and instructions for the next step.  This sounded like much more fun than a bunch of random notions, plus I'd get fabric! I breezed through the traditional and paper piecing sections, but then hit a wall when it came to the applique - not my favorite technique.  I put the project down in January when I cleaned up my Christmas decorations and didn't pick it up again until last week.  The remaining applique only took a couple of hours (of course).  And then it was time for the fun part, quilting it!  The pattern called for a cross-hatch over the entire thing, but I love playing with thread and FMQ, so I did my own thing.  Adding to my dislike of appli...

I did it!  I finished my last "deadline quilt' of the year and I've been sewing for fun the past couple of weeks!  Balancing a small business as a hobby can be tricky so I like to take December "off".  I am sewing samples for my newest pattern, but I'm not pressuring myself to finish them next month; if I do it will be a happy surprise.  I've been looking at my WIP list for all my crafty projects and deciding what I want to finish up now instead of carrying over into 2025, as well as working on a rough plan for next year.  Finally, if you are interested in any of my patterns, my 25% off holiday sale (applied automatically in cart) is active until December 4th (this will be the last sale until I release the next pattern).  I also joined BlueSky - give me a follow if you are over there too! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 14 WIP List at end of month: 14 Untouched in 2024: 4 Active QAL Projects: 1 Quilts Finis...

If you're been following along with my  Pebbled Prairie   QAL , then you know what I've been working on for the past several weeks.  Today, it is time for the big reveal! This quilt was a fun trip through my stash of Ruby Star fabrics that I've accumulated over the years, from the initial collections up to some new fabric that I bought for a project I'm planning on doing next year.  I also went far scrappier with this one than with any other Pebbled Prairie quilt that I have made; aside from the centers, each motif doesn't have a single repeating fabric. Here's a close-up of the fabrics that are in each block - do you see any favorites?  I love looking at this because I see so many of my old projects in there.  There's also a fair bit of fussy cutting, which is fun when you only need to cut nine squares from each fabric.  The only fabrics I bought for this quilt are the sashing, binding, and backing because I t...

It's a cold and rainy evening in November and I'm dreaming about the crisp fall weather we had back in October when I went on a before-school mission with my son to take photos of my Lemon Blossom Mystery quilt (which I actually finished in September)! The pattern was written by Kindred Quilt Co as a guest designer for the Toad Circle Mystery Quilt program.  Toad Circle was new to me, although she's done many mystery quilt-alongs before.  I found the site through a quilty friend who asked if I was interested in sewing a mystery quilt with curves.  I had mentally added a quilt with my curves to my "want to sew" list so I responded with an enthusiastic "yes!"  I was doubly excited when I saw that that supplies list required a fat quarter bundle; I immediately purchased the one I had my eye on,  Giucy Giuce's Motley  collection. I actually finished the quilt top on time and quickly basted it.  Then I straight-line quilted the horizontal an...

Welcome to Week 5 of the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along !  It's time to see your quilt top come together! I didn't realize how many of my blue fabrics were pictorial so there was a lot of fussy cutting to make the most of them.  I also went full scrappy with these blocks, which means there are a lot of different fabrics in play here.  Finally, it's my first time not using a solid for the borders and sashing and I'm really happy with how this blender looks! I'll share some close-ups and more details about my fabrics in the final quilt-along post.  All I'll say now, is that all of the patchwork fabrics came directly from my Ruby Star stash; I only bought the sashing/border fabrics for this quilt. The final quilt parade for the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along is going to be on November 17th.  If you have a finished quilt top of any size (doesn't have to be quilted) I would love to feature it here.  One person who subm...

A very short recap post this month - I didn't spend a lot of time in my sewing room but I did bake a delicious cake and take second in a speed puzzle competition.  It's not too late to make a top for my Pebbled Prairie quilt-along if you'd like a chance to win a prize for a finished top! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 13 WIP List at end of month: 14 Untouched in 2024: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Christmas Memories (August 2024) Brown Fabric Challenge (September 2024) Quilts Started Marble Mystery Quilt  - I'm starting a month late - it's not too late for you to join in either.  In a shocking twist of events, I didn't use a directional fabric (it feels like all my recent projects have used directional fabric and fussy cutting) so it was nice to sew for a bit without worrying about fabric placement. Ruby Star Pebbled Prairie -  my quilt-along quilt ! S...

Welcome to Week 4 of the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along !   More of the same this week as we are assembling the final color ring.  I'm dipping deep into my Ruby Star stash and pulling out some long-hoarded old favorites. Doing so, made me realize that my original Cotton + Steel throw quilt has never been posted here!  If you do a deep dive on my personal instagram, you can probably find it - I made this quilt almost exactly nine years ago, between September and December 2015.  My photo organization skills were not quite as good back then, but with a lot of digging through the old folders I managed to find the original (and only) photo of it. I could have taken a new one, but I like the original photos for these throwbacks.  The pattern is called Perfect 10 , and that's all I can remember unfortunately.  At the time, my oldest was in second grade and the other two were home with me most of the day so ...

At the beginning of the year, my friend Kerry launched a challenge to show the color brown a little love.  She asked us to make anything we wanted with a piece of brown fabric that she would send us.  I was immediately in.  The deadline was the end of October, so, nine months after I received her package, here is my finished brown challenge project: I made a brown table runner based on Retro Crochet quilt pattern (I purchased the pattern but reduced the scale to fit my project).  The brown color that Kerry sent me was labeled Kona Sable and the binding is an unlabeled brown solid from my stash.  The rest is a true scrappy masterpiece: the yellow and white fabrics are from my Rest of the Quilt Back test blocks , the green is from my Christmas Memories quilt , and the brown print is leftover binding from my Halloween Pebbled Prairie quilt . The back gets into the scrappy fun too - a pattern called "Retro Crochet" is pret...

Welcome to Week 3 of the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along !  This week was a little more work because I didn't have my fabrics pre-cut, but I had fun choosing my fabrics.  My color B is "pink" but since I'm working all from stash and only with my Ruby Star fabrics , I used whatever was close, just like with the yellows .  Some are a little more peachy and one is a little more gray, but overall it's a good mix of pinky fabrics.  The corner square of each block is the same pink fabric, but I used sixteen different fabrics for the rest of the ring in each of the larger squares. My goal this week is "randomization".  If you look closely at the two versions of Pebbled Prairie in the QAL graphic, you can see that I laid out my fabrics in a pattern.  This time I really stretched myself to not do that.  I alternated whether a single fabric was placed horizontally or vertically in each block, but other than that I pl...

Welcome to Week 2 of the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along !  This is my favorite week in any quilt-along, or in any quilt project really: the week we start to sew the fabrics together! I have all my squares cut out and today I'm going to show you my easy method for randomizing fabric placement and keeping all the pieces in the right places when sewing them together in nine patch blocks.   The secret is the answer key in the back of a Sudoku puzzle book! First, arrange your squares into nine equal piles and number them.  Each individual fabric should only be in one pile, but it's ok if one pile has multiple fabrics in it.  For example, my pile 4 has a mix of three fabrics so the bird fabric will not be in every 9-patch.  But, if I had the bird fabric in two different piles, then the bird would appear twice in the same 9-patch. Once the fabric is sorted, choose four squares from any answer key (I drew a pink box around...

Welcome to Week 1 of the Pebbled Prairie Quilt-Along !  I'm so happy you decided to sew along with me! We are starting off this week with cutting. Or, if you are like me, some of the cutting. I get too impatient to see how the block is going to look and just start sewing.  So for week one, I cut the squares for my 9-patches and my vertical sashing.  I'm excited for this to be my first non-solid fabric sashing version of Pebbled Prairie ! I bought the sashing fabric because I didn't have a piece large enough in my stash, but the plan is for everything else to come from my vintage Cotton and Steel and current Ruby Star stash.  I was especially excited to use up the long skinny side off-cuts from my Sew Place Like Home quilt back. I stacked my squares in nine piles for the nine patches that we will be making next week.  You can see that two of the piles have multiple fabrics in them; this will add more variety to my finished quilt.  I...

Good morning! It's the beginning of October and that means it is time to look back at my goals for the third quarter of the year.  I only had two goals for Q3 , and I'm happy to report that I achieved both of them! Q3 Goal 1: Pattern Releases I was working on two patterns at the end of Q2 and both are complete.  My Pebbled Prairie pattern is now available in both print and PDF form!  I wrote this pattern at the beginning of the year and then delayed it because of a design concern.  This has been addressed and it's now out in the world for everyone to enjoy. I love my Halloween version of the quilt, but I realize that that's not the most practical choice for marketing the quilt year-round.  My other quilt samples were made with the original pattern design so they aren't usable for promoting it; as a result, I'm planning on spending October making another quilt in a less-seasonal color palette.  I'm running a quilt-along for anyon...