BluePip Designs

My kids were off school yesterday and I had two flowery quilts to photograph, so we headed to the local public conservatory to take quilt photos (they were rewarded with lunch at IKEA and a trip through the car wash).  I thought it would be pretty deserted on a Monday morning, but I was wrong - it was full of people.  In fact, it was probably the busiest I've ever seen it!  I normally time my photos to when I know my favorite park will be empty, so I was a little self-conscious at first, but I got so many compliments from many different people that I felt comfortable fast.  It was a good reminder that I need to step out of my comfort zone sometimes!


The majority of these blocks were pieced from charm squares - the only requirement was that they had to have flowers (the four text squares are flower names)!  I made most of the blocks at my first quilt retreat, but had to stop because I didn't bring enough fabric with me - rookie mistake!  It then sat for almost a year until I ma…

Introducing the Forgotten Fat Quarter quilt!  I am playing along with Irene from Sugaridoo on a monthly "row along" quilt hosted on the Bernina blog.  At the end of each month she releases a new row in a single rainbow color for us to make.  Her quilt is all solids but I decided that I am going to choose a "forgotten fat quarter" and a left-over piece of solid fabric from my stash to make each row.  We're not making the rows in order so I have no idea if the end result will be cohesive or not, but I'm having fun busting my stash and putting it together.



Month one (row 5) featured a medium orange and hashtag blocks, which reminded me of the hashtag fat quarters I had in two slightly different color ways.  I don't remember when I bought them or why, which gave me the idea for the "forgotten fat quarter" part of my quilt.  In each row I will take a fat quarter that's been sitting around forever and incorporate it into my quilt.  I don't th…

Welcome 2020!  A new year for me always starts with a little bit of decluttering as I pack the Christmas decorations away, so I'm started the year by hitting my 2020 goals hard.  I have two sub-goals for myself in January. The first is to mail two quilts out by the end of the month.  One just needs a label and the other is about 40% quilted (by me!).  I can't give any more details right now - neither recipient knows I have something for them so I don't want to ruin the surprise in case they are reading here.

The second part of my goal is to finish my Scrappy Trip quilt top!  Originally I had hoped to finish the entire quilt by the end of the month, but I agreed to some secret sewing today so I think I'm better off aiming just a little bit lower.  For this quilt, the time-consuming part is picking the "right" scrappy fabrics to balance the whole thing out.  Sewing them together once the fabric is picked is the easy part!


That's a picture of my most-recentl…

I've been riding the WIP train pretty heavily for the second half of this year and I'm absolutely thrilled with how much cleaner my sewing room is!  Having to pack up most of the room so a new window could be installed helped a lot too. Here's my year by the numbers:

Quilts (of any size) finished in 2019: 17
My oldest finish was a mini quilt made from a block I made in 2016My last finish was a quilt I made with my son - started in June 20174 of the finishes were started in 20182 were started in 2019, fell into WIP status, but eventually got finished7 were made sequentially, as in they were pieced and then immediately quilted and bound2 of these were cross-stitch projects that got turned into mini quilts5 were "regular" mini quilts1 was made into a throw pillow2 were sent out to long-arm quilters (this is a lot for me!)For the eagle-eyed - I did blog about 2 additional quilts in January, but those were both finished in December 2018 and thus are not included in th…

Merry Christmas Eve! Today I am sharing a quilt three years in the making: the Sleigh Bell Sampler!


My son and I started piecing this together in June of 2017, just after his 9th birthday.  He picked all the fabrics and did all the piecing with me at his side.  I was in charge of cutting and ironing.  The three main fabrics were purchased, but the rest is scrappy from my stash.  He also determined the final layout of the quilt.

We worked on this on and off over the course of two years and at the end of summer 2018 all the blocks were pieced and put together with 2 of the 6 borders attached, and all of the pieced border elements made.  And then it sat.  As part of the sewing room cleaning I was doing earlier this year, I pulled it out in early August 2019 and challenged him to finish sewing it with me before he started the sixth grade.  A little bribery was involved, but we got it done!  After a trip to the fabric store to choose a backing, we sent it out to be quilted with white snowf…

There's nothing like a sudden, early cold snap to get you thinking about summer.  And there's something about a goal to get yourself motivated.  Add on that our window contractor is coming back on the 14th to finish up some work (including in my sewing room) and we'll have family here non-stop after the 20th and I think this is the earliest I have ever finished one of my goals!

The first step was making two more blocks.  Both are slightly modified, but one is a block from the 2019 Summer Sampler and one is from The Quilt Block Cookbook.





Next up was the part that has been holding me back - the setting.  I loved the one offered with the pattern, but didn't want my quilt to be quite so large.  So in the end I went with a traditional layout, doing a narrow 1" sashing with Libs Elliot Raw in Rinsed.  I left my outer border a little wider, but will probably trim it down after I finish quilting.


Finally, I dragged the whole thing out to the deck where I took all my bloc…

Happy December!


I am celebrating the holiday season with not one, but two Advent calendars.  I got a little excited and opened the cross-stitch one early, which means that that cute little doggy above was not a one-day finish.  The doily is also hand-made, but not by me - my great-aunt made it in the late 90s!  Neither box is currently available, but the cross-stitch one is from The Geeky Stitching Company and the sewing one is from Stitch Supply Co!  The boxes are almost too cute to open!


My goal for December is to work on a quilt top that I spend a lot of time thinking about - my 2018 Summer Sampler.


I spend a lot of time internally debating on a final layout for this, and it's time to just bite the bullet and sew it all together.  The blocks have been done since September 2018 and that's long enough.  I don't even want to get it quilted, just get it all sewn together so it's first in the queue to be quilted once the calendar flips over to 2020!  
I'm linking up …

My goal for November was to slow down and focus on the joy of sewing and I hit that metric!  Slow sewing isn't all that blog-able, so I saved it all for one recap post.  Maybe you'll recognize some of these old forgotten projects.

First, I finished a mini pillow.  This block was the start of a quilt-along that never got off the ground for me due to too many other projects.  The book pattern is called Tall Tales and lots of fun to make!


Then I decided to make a paper-pieced block, so it was back to my Rainbow Blossom quilt.  I accidentally pre-ordered this Cipher fabric from two separate websites so it seemed like the perfect fabric to make the word "Inspire" with.  Once I had the block done, I went ahead and sewed all the blocks I have made together.



Next, I went back to another quilt-along, the Scrappy Trip Along!  I made two blocks for this, which brings my total up to 11 (I need 16).  The small watering can block was made at half-size from a pattern in Lori Holt&#…

Are you ready for Christmas?  Target is, so I decided that was the most logical place to take a picture of my most recent quilt finish!  I went in right at 7am and one of the employees was nice enough to take this for me.  I'm calling this quilt Holiday as a nod to the fact that the front is made entirely of Alison Glass' Holiday line.


I also took some pictures outside with a pine tree, but I think the Target ones adds the bling that was missing from this one - I'm not quite ready to put up the decorations at my own house yet!  This quilt is my version of the Ultimate Beginner Quilt-Along hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop.
I made up my own setting for it - the "holly balls" in the center just break up the green a little bit since I'm not a huge fan of borders.  It may look complicated, but it was pretty easy - cut two strips of your background fabric that are 1.75" wide and one strip of the contrast color that is 1.5" wide.  Sew the strips together in…

It's been a busy few months around my sewing room - after not finishing a quilt since June (when I finished both Trinket and Tula Pop) I finished three in October (Paper Round, Sweet Treat, and Kinship).  Remember my flying geese fussy cutting tutorial?  That quilt is done too, and will get its blog post later this week.  So, how to top that?  The answer is to slow down!


I'm really loving seeing my WIP list shrink - I haven't even started a new quilt project since June!  But with all these big finishes, I've been neglected a list of smaller things I want to get done.

While I want to do all of these things, I've decided to make my goal be only the one I want done most - the Harry Potter mini.  This was hanging on my wall forever until the painter's tape just gave up and it fell to the floor.  I miss it and instead of just taping it up again I think it deserves to be a finished mini!  Here he is in all his wrinkled, tapey glory.

This smaller goal is me trying to…

Today I am sharing my version of the latest block in the FQS Classic and Vintage series - the Broken Dishes block!


I used an unlabeled piece of Moda Grunge fabric (it's mostly brown with some pink in it) and Bounty fabric from April Rosenthal's Orchard collection.  It's amazing how changing the fabric can make the block look so much more modern!  The FQS tutorial walks you through making the block using Triangles on a Roll paper, which makes assembly quick and accurate.

Thanks for stopping by!

Another sew-along is over and my Kinship quilt is done!


This was a fun "free" quilt - it is entirely made up from scraps.  I mainly focused on using up random charm and mini charm squares, but any piece of fabric in my sewing room was fair game.  My kids had fun with this too - if they wandered in while I was choosing fabric I let them pull the fabric for me.  The back is by Carolyn Friedlander; it was purchased for my Paper Round quilt and then rejected for being too dark, but I love how it looks with this one.  And for once I went easy on myself and just did a giant meander!  Fast and easy and perfect for a quilt that has so much going on.

Scrappy quilts are some of my favorite quilts to make, and this one was done entirely without a plan. I just sewed each block depending on my mood.  I then immediately sewed it into its row.  Every ten days I got to give a little cheer and then sew the finished row to the rest of the time.  That means on day 100, it was all ready for bas…

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…