BluePip Designs

On the menu today is another finished quilt!  The Sweet Treat quilt was pieced entirely from scraps in my sewing room - even the background is a piece of yardage bought for a different pattern that I decided not to make.


As I was finishing up the top of my quilt, the designers of Ruby Star Society were giving sneak peeks of their inaugural collections.  I decided it was worth waiting for two of the new prints that Melody Miller was releasing -  this ice cream print for the back and Spark fabric in Lipstick for my binding.  That almost-solid with just a pop of interest is exactly what I am into right now.

By the time I had the backing in hand, I had a whole pile of tops ready or almost ready for quilting so I decided to splurge and send it out to be quilted.  These fans just remind me of ice cream swirls!

You can get this pattern from Lindsey at Pen and Paper Designs - I tweaked it a little bit by adding the second ice cream truck.  Thanks for stopping by - I'm off to get a sweet t…

I finally got around to that photo shoot I promised you at the end of August!  In my defense, I decided that the print stripes were too wide to go unquilted, so the whole thing went back down to the sewing room for a little extra TLC.



All I did was echo the print on the pattern - you can get a good idea of what it looks like by looking at the back.

Sidenote: doesn't that teal binding look fantastic with both the front and the back of the quilt?  These Quantum fabrics are so beautiful and exactly my style!

I really enjoyed sewing these curves and it looks so striking despite only needing eight blocks and a giant strip block.  I definitely spent more time quilting than piecing!  I got the pattern from Issue 24 of Make Modern magazine, and it looks like it has been out for so long that you can now buy it directly from Jenny Haynes at Papper Sax Sten as well.
Thanks for reading!

Happy Thursday!  My goal this month is simple: finish up my Kinship sampler!  Today is day 95 out of 100, which means I only have five more blocks to go!


I've been sewing them together as I made them, which means this just needs to get basted, quilted, and bound!  I'm proud of myself for sticking with the sampler the whole way through, but want it to be completely finished, unlike the piles of blocks left over from the 2018 Summer Sampler and 100 Days 100 Blocks 2018 - both have all the blocks done yet are still waiting for me to get around to the final assembly stage.

I'm linking up my goal with Elm Street Quilts.

Whew!  I like to try and stretch myself with my monthly goal, and this month was no exception.  I needed to make eleven more blocks for this top, then sew them together and add two borders.  Sounds easy, right?  And it should have been, except that for some reason I thought September ended on Tuesday and we had company over the weekend, which severely limited my sewing time (in a good way!).

Mondays are normally my "no sew" day, but I managed to rearrange my afternoon to get most of the sewing done.  Then it was off to swim lessons and making supper, all the time knowing that I just needed that last floral border.  I may have been helping a fourth grader with fraction homework while I sewed it on, but it got done!  Unfortunately, it was both dark and raining when I finished up, but a basement picture is better than no picture!


This one will be going into hibernation for the next month or so because I want to piece something from the new Farm Girl Vintage 2 book for an epic …

If you've been following me on Instagram, you know I've been participating in the Ultimate Beginner Quilt Along, hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop.  I started with this bundle of Alison Glass Holiday fabric.


And then I sewed the first six blocks.  You can tell that not all the pictures were taken at the same time of day - oops!

Today I'm going to be walking you through the newest block, Zig Zag Flying Geese.  My Almost No-Waste Flying Geese tutorial shows how to make a bunch of geese quickly, but for this block I wanted to fussy cut my geese so I am making them in the traditional manner.  You will need to use the pattern in the link to get the dimensions of each piece.

Quick vocabulary lesson:
The goose is the main fabric of the flying goose; in this case, the piece with the people on it.
The sky are the two small triangles that are sewn onto the goose to make it into a triangle.

My secret weapon for doing this is my.Small Flying Geese Ruler, but you can get the same effect b…

The great clean-out continues!  I told my mother-in-law that I was hoping to finish nine quilts by the end of the year and I'm off to a good start - Paper Round is done, I just got word that the quilting on my Sweet Treat is starting, and I'll drop off the Sleigh Bell Sampler when I pick that one up next week.  It will be wonderful to start 2020 with a much shorter WIP list!

Keeping up with that WIP list, I made a few random blocks this week.  First, a mint ice cream cone (my favorite!) for my Rainbow Blossom quilt.


Next, I saw a beautiful scrappy project on Instagram and was instantly smitten, but then I reminded myself that I am working on a scrappy trip around the world quilt so I don't really need another project like that.  As a result, I sewed a new block for that quilt - that's 9/16!


My Summer Sampler got a block.


And there are only 28 blocks to go in my Kinship sampler!  I'm too lazy for a big picture, but here's my most recent block.


But I decided to m…

I'm still in full "clean-up old projects" mode, and I have another success story to share!  In addition to the two finished quilt tops that got moved to the quilting stage, I also found the Christmas quilt that my son and I were working on last winter.  As of July 2018, we had the center and the top and bottom borders on, plus all the elements for the left and right pieced borders made.  However, being a kid he had lost interest and refused to work on it again.

With only two weeks left before school started, I challenged him to finish his top before starting 6th grade.  This was a stretch because he had a long weekend with his grandparents planned, but with a little Labor Day push we were able to get the top done!


Next up is piecing the back and sending it out for quilting.  I will do the hand-binding for him, so there's no reason this shouldn't be finished by Thanksgiving!

I'm squeaking in with my finish for my August goal (what else is new?)  My Paper Round quilt is quilted and bound!  It is bigger than I remembered, but a challenge is always fun, right?


I don't know how I keep ending up with projects that seem to beg for straight-line quilting, but in this case I really think it was worth it (I think I always say that too)!  The colorful stripes just jump off of the maroon background.  Give me a month and I'll forget about the pain of burying all those ends where the lines run into it.  My next quilting project will hopefully be my Kinship sampler and that one is getting a giant neutral meander all over the top of it - promise!

I'm linking up my finish with Elm Street Quilts, and I'll post a full picture of the final quilt once the Labor Day weekend fun is over and I have a chance to take some photos and write up a proper post!

It's been a little quiet around here - we took our final summer road trip and had a wonderful time.  All my quilting time has been spent doing things that aren't super-blogpost-worthy, but let's check in anyway!

My Paper Round quilt is basted and quilting has begun!


The backing finally arrived for my Sweet Treat quilt and I dropped it off to be quilted last night.  A special end-of-summer treat for myself!


I am still behind on my Summer Sampler blocks - I'm really struggling with fabric choice for some reason.  But I did manage to make a decision for one of them - only four more to go!


Finally, my 100 Days quilt is halfway done!  50 beautiful blocks all sewn together.


Not bad for only having a few days to sew this week!

Quilt alongs are fun, but I'm itching to finish up another big quilt!  And the easiest way to finish a big quilt is to finish one that's practically done - my Paper Round quilt!  I just missed finishing the top when it was my monthly goal back in February, and it's been sitting and waiting ever since.  In my defense, I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to back it with and how I wanted to quilt it.  But I am ready now - I unfolded it and did the first pass ironing, then dragged it outside and took a new picture of it with borders on for this post.  My quilt plan is in place and I am ready for the challenge!


I'm linking up my goal with Elm Street Quilts.

I spent most of July alternating between catching up on my quilt-alongs and spending time with my kids both inside and out.  This worked out really well because I felt like I was getting a lot done even when I only had twenty minutes or so to sew!

First, my Summer Sampler blocks.  As always with this sampler, I am mixing things up and creating my own interpretation of the blocks.  There are currently three blocks in the "to make" pile but I adore the nine that I have done already and can't wait to have this quilt on my bed.


Next, my 100 days blocks.  This year it's a new pattern and there's lot about it that I really like: the unique way Angie wrote the pattern, not all the blocks are square, most of the blocks are a quick sew, and the blocks aren't in any particular order based on what elements make them up.  My plan for a pastels has slipped a little, but I'm ok with that.  I've long been obsessed with crazy quilts and making this is a joy. 


Finally, m…

Today we are traveling almost exactly eight years into the past.  Eight years ago yesterday I finished my very first quilt!


You'd think I would have gone outside and taken a picture, but it was my first quilt photography experience too.  Plus my current quilt-holders were a little too small to be helpful (one wasn't even born yet!).
Some thoughts.  I borrowed my mom's circa-1980 Kenmore sewing machine to make some boppy covers when I was pregnant with my second child because I didn't like any of the ones they had in-store (they turned out great, if you are wondering!).  Then my mom came to visit and took the sewing machine home with her.  I missed it so much I ended up buying my own machine two weeks later!
I had always been interested in quilts, and this was the first time that I had dedicated access to a machine to try it out.  My mother-in-law is a quilter and she gave me this pattern (which I no longer have) from one of her quilt magazines.  She told me it was stri…

Flying geese.  I love them and I hate them.  One of the reasons I decided to make the Ricochet Quilt last summer was to improve my technique with these units.  If you're like me, you hate the waste of piecing them traditionally, but struggle to get them to the right size with their points intact with the no-waste method.

Enter the (almost) no waste flying geese method.  This method lets you make four geese at once that end up slightly oversized so you can trim them down to the perfect size.  You can also use a full quarter-inch seam instead of a scant seam.  This prevents the tops of the geese from getting cut off.  Finally, it gives you a little more room for error in case one of your squares is slightly off.



Cutting
Cutting is based on the size of your FINISHED flying goose block.  There's a chart after the picture, but in a nutshell:

You will need one large square for the goose (inner) fabric.  Size of square is your desired finished width plus 1.25 inches.  Cut the square o…