BluePip Designs

The first quarter of 2024 flew by in a flash.  You might remember that I ended 2023 in a bit of a funk , so I decided to jumpstart 2024 with a challenge I've always admired but never partaken in: Project Quilting !  Project Quilting is a series of six different prompts to make an entire quilted project in just one week and I'm happy to report that I successfully finished all six challenges. Challenge My Project Challenge Prompt My Personal Challenge 1 Birdhouses I went into Week 1 with no expectations. I ended up making a FPP project based on three renderings of birdhouses created by my children. 2 Sky Color My goal was "fast and pixelated". I achieved one of these!

March was a balancing act.  I successfully finished the last two Project Quilting challenges and made an additional baby quilt, but I also spent a lot of time on my computer working on two different patterns.  Windsuit isn't quite ready, but it's oh-so-close and I can't wait to release it so all of you can make your own versions as well!  My son and I made a "March Madness" board game bracket and we've been busy playing all the games on there in our limited spare time.  Throw in a spring break weekend getaway and the first major snowstorm of the winter and it was definitely a full month! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 10 WIP List at end of month: 11 Untouched in 2024: 4 Active QAL Projects: 1 Quilts Finished Windsuit - Baby Print Version (March 2024) -  Coming Soon! Project Quilting 15.5 (March 2024) Project Quilting 15.6 (March 2024) Quilts Started I am designing a row-by-row quilt with another member of my guild.  She did al

The Project Quilting challenges have made the first three months of the year fly by - I can't believe March is already almost over!  I also can't believe that this is the first time I have participated - I'm already looking forward to season 16 next year.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.   The sixth and final Project Quilting challenge is Irish Chain .  I have always admired Irish Chain quilts, but I've never actually made one.  Luckily for me, my kids are home on spring break this week otherwise I probably would have over-extended myself and made a full-size Irish Chain quilt.  Instead, I made a single oversized block into the cutest little baby quilt! My quilt is based on a sketch of a Triple Irish Chain block that I found on a website featuring vintage quilt blocks and a single Rubber Ducky quilt block by Kelli Fannin .  I enlarged the duck block so that it would fit in the center of my 30" Irish Chain block, and then I added a simple border

This challenge was not what I was expecting at all!  Sunday morning I was lazily thinking that I'd like to make something with curves this week, but when noon rolled around I saw the new challenge was Wearables . I've made some wearable projects before, but it's not really something I enjoy.  Making identically-sized pieces that fit together and look good in 3D is just super stressful for me and sewing is supposed to be fun.  It's basically the same as hemming curtains or mending a pair of pants to me . I'm much happier looking at the beautiful creations of people who enjoy that sort of sewing. So I made a scarf. I am obsessed with flannel-backed quilts and every time I trim one before binding I think, "I should make a scarf with this!" before I throw the extra flannel in my flannel-scraps bag.  If this piece of pink flannel looks familiar, it's because it's from the back of my Project Quilting Week 3 Challenge project . When I trimmed the quilt, t

February was full of literal flying geese and computer admin.  I made more flying geese for two projects than I normally make in a year!  I also soft-launched my brand-new standalone pattern shop, BluePipDesigns.com !  You'll hear more about this when Windsuit is released, but please go and check it out now! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 10 WIP List at end of month: 10 Untouched in 2024: 5 Active QAL Projects: 0 Quilts Finished Mother (February 2021) Project Quilting: Inside Out (February 2024) Project Quilting: Hourglass (February 2024) Quilts Started Kona Solids Quilt - Technically, I started this on January 31st, but not until after I published the blog post.  It is a free pattern by Robert Kaufman fabrics featuring Kona Solids.  I used my color card and raided my stash to to find the closest matches to each color (some of them aren't Konas - don't tell!).  I made all twelve blocks this month and will be making the fun half-squ

It's snowing this afternoon.  That's not really remarkable for a Tuesday in February here except that this winter is on track to be our least-snowiest ever (in contrast to last winter, which finished as the fourth-snowiest ever).  We also set a record high temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit just yesterday, so it's a pretty big overnight shift.  I'm not just talking about the weather because I'm in the Midwest and that's what we do, however.  I'm talking about it because it ties in to the theme of my recently completed quilt, Mother. I will address the elephant in the room first: this is a square quilt.  It looks awkwardly shaped because the rectangle blocks aren't what you are used to seeing.  But if you get out a ruler and measure it, the quilt is in fact 60x60.  Moving on, this quilt is made from the Mother pattern designed by Taralee Quiltery for the Portland MQG as a quilt-along in 2021.  I was initially drawn to the teardrop s

What a great challenge Project Quilting has put forth this week!  When I saw that it was "Hourglass", I smiled because it aligns with my pre-made goals for this challenge in two ways: After going big last time , I challenged myself to go small this time and finish my entire project top in one sitting. I wanted to use the new Tiny TV pattern by Quiet Play as my pattern and I had to wait patiently until Wednesday (release day!) to receive it. But how to combine the TV and the hourglass?  I decided to go the nostalgia route and make the television test signal page that used to appear on the TV during the hours that nothing was broadcast.  I remember going downstairs in the morning and turning on the TV to see this, then dozing off again on the couch until the national anthem woke me up. To incorporate the literal hourglass that the challenge calls for, I added a one inch border to each side of the pattern then modified it to create an hourglass behind the TV.  All four fabric

It's another even year, and historically I like to do a year-long project in even years (see my Temperature Quilt and my Postage Stamp Quilt ) - I joke that it takes me a year to recover!  Despite the jokes, these really do turn out to be some of my favorite quilts.  The biggest con is that they end up being out all year and take up room on my "design floor".  So this January, I decided I was going to make a quilt made up of 12 huge blocks and just sew them together at the end of the year.  I chose "Games" as my theme for January and I was off! I quickly realized this was going to be sustainable.  While I had fun picking out the fabric for the various games, some of the games didn't have a good corresponding fabric (I can't believe I don't have any fabric with trains on it!).  I was also limited by my family - since I was focusing on in-person games and I don't like to take the time to set up a physical board game to play by myself sometimes the

The third  Project Quilting  prompt was so much fun I jumped in in a BIG way!  That's right, I made a full-size quilt this week! The challenge this week was "Inside Out" and I used a pre-existing pattern,  Inside Out Star by Then Came June .  As soon as I saw the prompt, this pattern came to mind.  As I was scrolling through the project hashtag on Instagram, I knew immediately what fabrics I was going to use: a bundle of Liberty fabric and a few yards of a light blue chambray. These fabrics have been living together in that teal Stitch Supply Co project bag for a long time.  I know I won the Liberty bundle in a giveaway, but I can't remember from who or why.  I bought the chambray shortly after to make something with it.  I can't recall what my initial plan was for them, but I'm thrilled that they are out of the bag and in this pretty quilt now! Each of the Liberty pieces was about 13x9 so I resized the blocks to use as much