BluePip Designs

During my Wednesday morning run I decided I needed a quick and easy project.  I had plenty of time to think about it while I was running (let's be honest: most of my run time is spent thinking about quilting!) and decided to make the Freshly Picked table runner that came in my September Sew Sampler box . I chose this because I liked the look of the finished table runner but also because it was a little bit of a stretch for me - I rarely work with florals.  I started by separating out the charm pack of The Good Life that was included and "harvesting" the charms that looked like something I would use in other projects.  The white hearts on navy went to my box of I-Spy fabrics and the stripes got thrown in with my Varsity charm packs.  After taking the duplicates out, I was a few charms short, but luckily I had a few floral prints laying around that fit right in.  The whole thing went together easily in a couple of hours. I pieced the back using my green...

Today I am sharing my new favorite pouch pattern!  I was lucky enough to do some testing for Sara over at Sew Sweetness and I made this little beauty: This is the Cotton Candy pouch from her new line of Minikins .  I love that the sides are made from foam so that when you unzip it it's like a mini cube that you can see everything inside it. I've been holding onto the fabric I used for the lining for a long time.  It's an Alexander Henry print with a lot going on and I could never bear to cut it up - I'm so glad to have found the perfect use for it!  This is also my best-fitting lining ever!  It's a little pinched at one end because I used a zipper I had on hand and it was two inches shorter than what the pattern called for.  If you follow the instructions you won't have this problem. I normally give my kids my tester bags because I don't like something about them, but I'm keeping this one for myself.  Right now it's housing all of my cro...

This was a fun little surprise in my September Sew Sampler Box - a Moda Matchbox Quilt kit ! I had no idea this was even a thing so I was pleasantly surprised. The whole thing (including backing, batting, binding, and instructions!) came on a single panel, so I got some bonus texty low-volume fabric that can be used in other projects too. It's my first time hand-quilting anything and I really enjoyed it.  This is a tiny 6"x6" Mini Mini Quilt, and it's going to fit perfectly into a hole on my mini quilt wall that I've been wondering how to fill.  I've got one more mini to finish up and then I'll share a picture of the whole wall.

I'm at the low point in this quilt.  The point where it's getting annoying to have to pick out fabric for each block because I'm worrying too much about if I've used a certain piece of fabric before and how balanced all my rainbow colors are.  I may have even been avoiding it because I'm not wanting to think quite so hard.  That said, I've completed a few smaller side projects and it's time to jump back in and make some progress on this one! Block 11 is Old Maid's Puzzle and I'm not a huge fan of the block.  The asymmetricalness of it just doesn't appeal to me - maybe I'd like it better if it wasn't a stand-alone block in a sampler quilt.  I also think my green background is a little too bright, but I love my purple lemurs (?) and black and white striped fabric. I also made a couple of tiny (2.75") diamond filler blocks.  I haven't determined where they'll go in the final layout, but I had the fabric for the centers le...

I am completely obsessed with this quilt and it's hard to ignore even if I want to, as I have it laid out across my sewing room floor right now.  I don't have a design wall so whatever I'm working on is always front and center and keeps me walking around the edges of the room.  I love puzzling out how to fit things together and since I'm ahead I decided to start making some of the smaller blocks and piecing together sections where I can. I started off by sorting through a set of charms I got in a recent swap and deciding which ones I wanted to incorporate into my quilt - the small size made them perfect for cutting out various filler blocks. I also used one of them in the October block from my Release the Kraken quilt: And then there was this one.  No idea what the fabric is, but I couldn't bear to cut it at all so it became a version of week 13's Courthouse Steps block: Finally, one of the large diamond blocks.  This bike fabric is not a...

I've wanted to make a Halloween quilt for the past couple of years (and even made a cute ghost mini quilt last year) and after weeks of looking at all the spooky Halloween quilt progress pictures on Instagram I decided this is my year!  The lovely ladies at The Fat Quarter Shop sent me a fat quarter bundle of Hocus Pocus to make their new Cobblestone quilt pattern . I started off in the kids' playroom playing the game of "arrange the fat quarters so no two colors and patterns touch each other".  It's a fun but frustrating game, especially when switching two pieces around means you have to make four more switches to keep the rules going, but I did come up with a layout that I liked.  I put the eyeballs right in the middle because they were what attracted me to this bundle in the first place! After I was happy with the layout I started cutting.  Only three big rectangles from each piece of fabric so it went really quickly!  It's pieced in strips,...

My newest pattern is here: The Perfect Pocket Pillow !  This pattern is based on a tooth fairy pillow that I made my oldest son years ago - almost a full year before he actually lost a tooth in fact.  It's a quick 30-minute project that makes it easy for the tooth fairy to find that tiny tooth in the middle of the night. The finished pillow is 6"x6", with a small pocket on the front, the perfect size to hold both a tooth and a dollar bill.  The big pocket on the back is big enough to hold just about anything! The front is made from 2.5" strips, so it's a great way to use up extra jelly roll strips of a favorite fabric line! After I'd sewn up a few tooth fairy versions I decided to sew one up in Christmas fabrics just to see how it would look as an Advent Calendar.  You can slip a magnet inside the pocket, then use another magnet on the front to count down the days.  The big pocket on the back has room for that day's sweet treat! ...