BluePip Designs

Today I am sharing a tutorial for the fusion of my two favorite crafty hobbies: quilting and cross-stitch! The popular way to display cross-stitch pieces is to put them up in hoops, but as a quilter I like to have all my loose ends tied up and hidden away forever. I also have a system for displaying mini quilts in my house already and it's easier to switch out the cross-stitch pieces when they are actually tiny quilts. This tutorial is generalized so that it can be used with any size cross-stitch piece.  It also gives plenty of options for customizing your mini quilt for the perfect finish.  Please read through the entire tutorial once before beginning. Supply List A finished cross-stitch piece.  This method of finishing works best with smaller pieces (less than 7x7), unless you are planning on putting quilting lines through the cross-stitch part.  I've done this with larger pieces and they end up sagging in the middle until I add extra reinforcement. A piece ...

I've gone back and forth on this intro a couple of times, and here's the truth: I don't feel like I sewed much in Q3.  I worked on three different quilt tops over the summer and finished them all by the end of August, but in September, I just wasn't feeling it.  I've been spending my down time reading and watching movies instead, with a sprinkling of cross-stitching when I was on the couch at night.  I pushed myself to make the Summer Sampler block over the last few days and had fun doing it, so here's hoping I'll be back to sewing in Q4! Quilt Tally WIP List to Start the Quarter:  11 WIP List to End the Quarter: 9 Active QAL Projects: 0 Untouched in 2025: 4 Finished in Q3:  5 quilts, 1 cross-stitch project, 1 small project A look back at  my (failed) goals for Q3 : 2025 Q3 Goal 1: Release Floppy Nope.  The samples are made and I'm working on the diagrams before I send it to the technical editor. 2025 Q3 Goal 2: Finish Pooh Corner Done-ish - I f...

While my last leaders and enders quilt took about eight years to finish, I'm pleased to announce that this iteration only took four months to create.  Presenting, Amelia! I don't personally know any Amelias; the quilt is based on the Amelia pattern from the book Zero Waste Quilting by Patty Murphy .  I used Patty's color placement guide, but upsized my half square triangles (HST) to make better use of my scraps, as well as added a row to the bottom to make it slightly less square.  This quilt was easier than my last leaders and enders quilt because I wasn't worried about the fabrics being unique; instead I was worried about using up the scraps in my scrap bins.  I also dipped my charm square stash (I like to buy charm square stacks to add variety to my scrappy projects) and, in a few rare cases, cut into fat quarters to get the color balance that I wanted.  I selected the fabric for about 5-10 HSTs at a time, then sewed them tog...

After a long summer of slow stitching, I decided I needed to end the summer with a finished quilt. When I saw the new set of animal ghost patterns from Quiet Play , I knew I had found my project. And here he is, my newest mini quilt, Ghost Duck! We have many small duck toys in our home, so the duck was the logical choice for my little ghost. I pieced the entire top from scraps during a Zoom quilt guild meeting and then finished it up over the next few days. The quilting is done with white lines that blend in on the ghost and show up a little bit on the background, and the eyes are unquilted to give them more punch. The binding matches the background fabric. I could have faced the project, but decided that this worked well enough. The backing is what is left from the binding on my other duck quilt , which is a nice bit of full-circle fabric usage. And that's it! A sweet, fast finish to end my summer, and a new decoration for Hallowe...

Can you believe it's been almost three months since I completed a quilt?  For me, that's a long time!  I'm pretty close though: I finished two tops last week and I'm working on the last block of a third right now.  The first top is bagged up and ready for the longarm quilter, but waiting so I can take the third top at the same time.  The second top is basted and waiting for me to send those two out so I can quilt it myself at home.  So there should be a flurry of finished quilts in September! I have also done a little non-quilt sewing.  My son asked me a few months ago if I could make him a dice bag for his new D12 collection, and I'm always happy to sew custom requests for my kids (but only my kids!).  I dusted off my favorite drawstring bag pattern , but, unfortunately, none of the fabric in my stash fit his vision, so he had to wait until I placed a new fabric order to pick out something that he liked.  I'm ...

It's summer again!  It was snowing out when I published my Q2 goals and today it was sunny and hot!  I'm spending time outside biking and walking and time inside bowling.  I didn't work on a lot of different projects this quarter, but I finished two old WIPS which is always a joy. Quilt Tally WIP List to Start the Quarter: 10 WIP List to End the Quarter:  11 Active QAL Projects:  1 Untouched in 2025:  5 Finished in Q2:  4 quilts, 1 cross-stitch project, 7 small projects A look back at my goals for Q2 : 2025 Q2 Goal 1: Start a New Leaders and Enders Project I started a new one and it's also blue! Instead of a  four patch design , I'm doing a coin layout with blue and low volume scraps.  I'm currently piecing them into sets of four, then planning on turning them into blocks of eight before sewing the whole top together.  This one isn't worried about unique fabrics (I'm cutting as many rectangles as possible...

It's June and the annual Minnesota Quilt Show has just ended.  In previous years, I've had quilts in the special exhibit hall and was part of a panel talking about pattern design .  This year, I dipped my toe in a bit farther and entered a quilt in the judged category.  Presenting Mini Zephyr! One of the categories this year was "miniaturization", or making a tiny quilt that could be mistaken for a full-size quilt in a photograph if there wasn't a point of reference available.  As soon as I saw this, I immediately became obsessed and had to try it with Zephyr . The mini Zephyr, or "Love Letters via Zephyr" as it was officially entered into the quilt show, has the exact same number of blocks as the two cover quilts, it's just made at a very small scale.  I actually used the baby size Zephyr as a guide for fabric placement ( this is the bottom quilt ). And here's how it looks compared to ...