BluePip Designs

Last April I started a "just for fun" quilt called Fado Road , and today I'm happy to share that the quilt is complete! This quilt jumped out at me from a "suggested for you" post on Instagram because it was so different from everything else in my feed.  I'm still obsessed with postage stamp blocks and web piecing , so it ticked those boxes as well.  It was also a true "decide once" pattern because after I chose the initial fabrics, I just plugged them into the pattern exactly as it was written.  Sometimes it's nice to sew just to sew, not make a ton of decisions about which fabrics to use where.  The quilt was constructed in sections and I put them together in between other projects as a relaxing break.  Unlike other quilts where I use the pattern as more of a suggestion, this one was a guide and I had to follow it almost exactly. The back of the quilt is a wideback from Tula Pink (ROAR! in Mist) , and I sent i...

This week's Project Quilting challenge was a fun one: Birthstones !  I am lucky to be an April baby, which means my birthstone is the diamond, a fact I've always loved.  However, that did make this challenge a little more boring for me and, as a result, I ended up making a whole pile of projects! My journey this week actually started on Saturday night, before the challenge was released.  I had just learned that a co-worker was moving on and wanted to make her a little project to take with her.  I started paging through the Zero Waste Quilting book that I received for Christmas for ideas.  I have a terrible habit of getting quilting books and then never making anything from them, so I thought maybe I'd kill two birds with one stone and make a project from there.  These mug rugs immediately caught my eye as a simple project that fit the bill perfectly. I decided to a checkerboard design, with two rectangles...

 As I promised last week, today I'm sharing a non-Project Quilting project : an adorable baby quilt! I've been wanting to sew a medallion quilt for a while now, so when the Fat Quarter Shop asked me to sew a version of their Amish Star tabletopper quilt for their Classic and Vintage series , I immediately said yes. I started with this adorable Twilight Creatures fabric by Natalia Juan Abello for Riley Blake Fabrics.  My original plan was to do a double border around the outside of the tabletopper to make it into a baby-sized quilt, but when I started cutting I realized that in order to fussy cut the animals properly I would need to size up my blocks.  So instead I made everything bigger and skipped that second border. Using the larger block size also allowed me to use the images surrounding the panel I bought for the back as cornerstones, which is an adorable added touch.  Centering the panel on the back was a little tricky, but I think I nailed it.  This...

It's hard to believe that we are already halfway through the Project Quilting challenges for the year.  Last year was my first year participating and I didn't really know what to expect.  This year I had more of a simple plan for myself: a list of small quilted items I wanted to make and the goal of using up full fabric scraps.  I've been doing pretty well with both of these! I made these cupcakes over a decade ago and they were very heavy played with. I'm so impressed that I found all six of them and that they are still in good shape! When I saw that the Project Quilting Challenge 16.3 was "common blocks" several things immediately came to mind.  First, I would definitely be making a churn dash block (my favorite!).  Second, it should be a two-color quilt.  I've never done a true two-color quilt with only two fabrics and, well, as you can see, I still haven't.  Red and white or blue and whi...