BluePip Designs

Another summer is drawing to a close, and this year I actually finished my summer quilting project before it ended.  Meet Oh, Granny ! I wasn't actually looking for a new quilt to make, but I saw an in-progess Oh, Granny  quilt on BlueSky and it was love at first sight.  I've been in love with simple square quilts since I made my postage stamp quilt and this fit the bill perfectly. As with all my scrappy quilts, I had some self-imposed rules to keep the quilt cohesive: The third round of each block was made with solid fabrics.  I choose three cool colors and three warm colors and made five blocks with each color scheme. The color of the center square was determined by the color of the solid fabrics. The other two rings could be any colors, but these were the opposite (warm/cool) of the solid fabrics. The final layout is a checkerboard of cool and warm blocks (determined by ...

What do you do with your scraps of quilt batting?  I buy my batting by the roll so I can always cut the perfect width of fabric, but the height is a different matter.  Sometimes the leftover is big enough for another project - if I'm lucky I can get a baby quilt from it, but mostly it goes to one of my mini quilts or cross-stitch minis.  But there comes a point when it's too small for even the smallest coaster. When that happens, it's time to cut the batting into squares and make tiny stuffed things!  I aim for roughly 1 inch squares and when the item is stuffed and finished, you can't tell that it was filled with batting scraps instead of fiberfill.  This lets me make custom-sized pillow inserts with ease (I think the largest size that I've made is about 18") or I can make small items like these Perfect Pocket Pillows that I made last month.  The best part is, I never run out of stuffing!  When my kids were small a...

In July, I did my first solo trunk show, and in the midst of gathering all the quilts and figuring out what I wanted to say, I realized it was absolutely, positively important that I made the Diamond Cuddlekiss quilt I had saved in my mock-up folder. This was important, because one of the themes of my presentation was that it's ok to not follow the pattern exactly (I'm terrible at following the pattern exactly).  And this quilt illustrated that perfectly.  I was recoloring the diagram in EQ8 and clicked wrong and ended up with this absolutely gorgeous secondary pattern.  When my son pulled the quilt out of the pile at the show, he accidentally held it up sideways at first, and the audience went wild - they loved how the sideways, recolored version looked like argyle.  I've added this version to my to-make list (I think it would be fun in Christmas colors!) - the versitility of this template keeps surprising me. If you want to make your...

Most of my sewing room decluttering attempts involve making scrappy quilts, but the quilt I'm making today has a slightly different story: yardage that was specifically set aside for a project.  Two years ago, I was looking for something in my sewing room and came across a bag with some fabric scraps and the pattern for the first quilt I ever made .  The feature fabric in that first quilt was elephant-themed and I instantly decided it would be fun to make that quilt again with some current elephant fabric.  So I hopped online and placed an order for some elephant and coordinating fabric.  But when it came, I was working on another project and it got placed in a bag, labeled, and set aside.  Fast forward to now when that fabric finally became a quilt! The timeline for the two quilts is this: June 2011: I made the original quilt (with fabric from Joann's!) June 18, 2024: I ordered the fabric for the updated quilt June 20, 2026: I s...

I knew this wasn't going to be a big sewing quarter due to my son's graduation and then I was injured and spent the very first day of it in Urgent Care getting five stitches in my right index finger (not a sewing injury).  I took advantage of this time to get my sewing machine's annual maintenance done and learned that spring is a more popular time for that than fall is.  But I'm happy to report that today my finger is completely healed, my machine is home, my son has graduated, and I'm back on a "regular" summer sewing schedule! Quilt Tally WIP List to Start the Quarter:  9 WIP List to End the Quarter:  10 Active QAL Projects:  2 Untouched in 2026:  4 Finished in Q2: 2 quilts, 3 cross-stitch projects, 4 small projects Let's jump right in and look at how I did with my  Q2 Goals : 2026 Q2 Goal 1: Finish Blue Coin Done .  Once I pulled this back out, I was able to finish the quilting in a single afternoon and bind i...

Hello!  I'm still here and sewing despite the lack of new posts.  I've actually finished two lovely quilts recently, but they are both waiting on summer road trips (to two different locations!) for their final photography sessions.  I know it would be fine to take them locally, but sometimes a fun location that fits perfectly makes documenting the quilt that much better.  I keep a physical photo album with printed photos of every crafty project I've ever finished dating back over twenty years! One thing that is ready to be shared is this finished Pin Banner .  It's been a full year since I released the Pin Banner pattern and this one was made by special request for a high schooler who earned a varsity letter this year.  To celebrate the anniversary, I'm offering 20% off of the Pin Banner pattern through the end of the month, no code needed, in case you have a need for one as well. I also took my annual field tri...

I enjoyed my finished  Blue Four Patch quilt so much that I wanted to start another leaders-and-enders quilt immediately after finishing it.  My blue scrap drawer was still overflowing (and to be honest, probably will be forever because it's my favorite color) so I knew the next project would feature blue as well.  I decided to pair the blue scraps with my also overflowing white scrap drawer to create a coin quilt.  A coin quilt is something that has been on my quilty bucket list for a long time, but felt kind of boring to make as my "featured project", which means it was perfect for some background sewing! For me, a scrappy quilt works better if there are a couple of rules when I'm piecing it together.  Because I wanted something that I could finish in less than seven years, I needed more lax rules that I had in my previous leaders-and-enders quilt so I settled on four: Only use blues that read as blue - avoid...

As always, the year started off hot with a lot of finishes!  I love that post-holidays energy boost.  I also spent some time cleaning up the recently defunct Make Modern affiliate links (this is their last year publishing) and updated Project Quilting links.  If you find a dead link on my blog and need help finding where it is supposed to go, please let me know so I can fix it up. Quilt Tally WIP List to Start the Quarter:  9 WIP List to End the Quarter: 9 Active QAL Projects: 1 Untouched in 2026: 4 Finished in Q1: 7 quilts, 3 cross-stitch projects, 2 small projects Let's jump right in and look at how I did with my Q1 Goals : 2026 Q1 Goal 1: Cuddlekiss Release Cuddlekiss was released on its planned date of February 1st!  It's never too early to start next year's Valentine's Day project (or any project to show your love for someone) so go check it out! Cuddlekiss Here Kitty ...