BluePip Designs

It's a new year with lots of new projects on the horizon!  I started the year off by doing something I have been missing: paper piecing! This block will be included in my scrap memory quilt to commemorate the Snowflake quilt I finished on New Year's Eve!  The pattern can be found here if you'd like to make one - it's nice and easy and suitable for a beginner. I also did another one of my favorite things: reading through my quilting spreadsheeting to take notes and make plans for 2021.  My head is bursting with all the ideas I have even as my kids are asking me a million questions, mostly about food.  It looks like I have already committed myself to three deadlines in January and two in February - very optimistic!  The good news is, I'm excited about every single item I put on my list this morning, so now all I have to do is get them done! The first item on my to-do list is to finish my Plaidish quilt.  I last worked on this d

Happy New Year!  Posting a little later than normal because I was rushing to finish Snowflake all day today! Goal #1: Get my WIP List Under 10 WIP List at beginning of month: 15 WIP List at end of month: 14 Untouched in 2020: 4 Active QAL Projects: 1 Kid Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Joy (December 2020) Snowflake (November 2020) Quilts Started Joy, but I finished it! Quilt Progress (4 WIPs touched) Morewood Mystery Quilt - I caught up on the teal blocks I skipped last month and added the gray blocks (60 of these!) for this month. Kid sewing!  My 8-year-old made the final block for his quilt!  It took him just under four years to make nine blocks.  I told him if he lays it out and picks sashing I'll sew it all together for him.  At this point, we both just want it to be done. Blocks made for both my memory scrap quilt and leaders and enders quilt. Goal #2: Give Away 5 Quilts - COM

Today I am sharing my final finish of 2020: my beautiful Snowflake quilt!! I finished this quickly to get it in my 2020 "finish" count - so quickly that I did the hand-binding in just one day! The original photo below was taken in my backyard the day I finished it, but a quilt I loved so much deserved a little road trip for a better picture, which is how I got the one up above. I've wanted to make this quilt since I first saw the pattern last year and when I saw Mr. Domestic's beautiful blue version in November I knew it was time.  I am in love with this quilt!  It really ticks all the boxes for me: bold, graphic, and scrappy.  In a happy coincidence, last month my guild did a fabric swap of 5x10 blue rectangles.  All the blues in this quilt are from stash and that swap! I quilted it with two of my favorite motifs: orange peels in the white of the snowflake to give

Is there any way to start a 2020 recap post without acknowledging the elephant in the corner?  COVID took so much away, but it did strengthen my immediate family and gave me so much extra time to work on my various crafting projects.  I didn't enjoy supervising distance learning, but I did enjoy the 600 or so board games we played (top 3 were KingDomino, BananaGrams, and Rummikub) and making "speed puzzles" with my children.  And day trips in our home state discovering waterfalls were a lot of fun! I'm writing this right after Christmas, and am still hoping to finish two more projects before the year ends.  One is small (my Animal Almanac cross-stitch) and one is larger (Snowflake quilt - finished this on New Year's Eve!).  I had hoped to finish Snowflake before Christmas, but of course I misjudged how much I had to do to prepare, and for the last few days I've just been hanging out with the family instead of in my sewing room.  T

 Eight days until Christmas and I finished the Christmas decoration I made for myself - that's a Christmas miracle! We mixed up our Christmas decorating this year and I love it!  The tree is huge and shaggy and twice the size we normally get but with the rearranged furniture it fits the room far better than any other tree we've had.  Normally the coffee table is displaying decorations, but this year it's just a coffee table so I decided it needed to be a little more festive.  The Joy pattern caught my eye and I knew instantly it was exactly what I wanted for this project. My table runner is made from 100% scraps - the white letters are leftover from my Snowflake quilt, the green center (and backing!) are from last year's Holiday quilt , the solid green is from my solids stash, and the rest came from my green scrap drawer.  I dug through everything and only picked scraps that were green on green (or very close!).  I sized it to fit comfortably on the table with a center

I've made (or at least started) about 150 quilts since I started quilted nine years ago, and today I present you with Big Top, my first full-sized quilt! So big it takes three kid sets of hands to hold it up! My oldest is in the middle and his little brothers are on either side, all on different height stools.  Even then, they are on their tippy toes to hold it up high enough (their going rate is ice cream if you are interested in hiring them). This is based on a wonderful quilt designed by Brigit Gail and I was immediately attracted to it because of the curves and the use of solids.  I was even more attracted to it when I read that the entire thing was based on an improv-pieced design!  I also love the variety of techniques involved in making it.  Besides the obvious curved piecing, the smaller striped sections are paper-pieced.  The larger fans are pieced traditionally.  My color scheme is tweaked slightly from Brigit's original color choices.   The pattern makes a generous

For me, December is the hardest month to set a goal for.  There's so much going on!  Our little family has plenty of traditions and each year I try to mix it up and add something new to delight the kids.  It's also fun to ask them what their favorite tradition is - the answers often surprise me! But amidst all the family time, I do enjoy sneaking off and taking a little time for myself.  I try to only sew for fun in December, so let's take a look at what's on my mind right now.  First of all, if your handmade gift isn't done or mostly done by the start of December, you probably aren't going to get it.  There are so many deadlines in December that I don't need the added stress of trying to craft on a timeline.  That being said, I do still make holiday items!  I tried something new when I was rearranging our family room to fit the Christmas tree this year and ended up with the end tables pushed together as a temporary coffee table (the regular coffee table is

The year is almost over and it was time to buckle down and make some progress on my first goal. I got a boost early in the month from my virtual quilt retreat - I ignored my family and just concentrated on sewing for an entire weekend. And when the retreat ended, I just kept sewing! Goal #1: Get my WIP List Under 10   WIP List at beginning of month: 17 WIP List at end of month: 15 Untouched in 2020: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Kid Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Adventure Quilt (January 2020) Big Top Quilt (July 2020) Chalk Stars Sample Quilt (October 2020) - Secret until spring! Quilts Started Snowflake quilt ! This has been on my to-make list since I first saw it last year and it was finally time to make one up.  I couldn't participate in this year's quilt-along because I was working on Camp Stars and Chalk Stars, but now that those are done I got right to work.  I didn't do mine in the order of the quilt-along anyway so maybe it's better that I just did it on