BluePip Designs

Welcome to my first 2022 recap post!  My WIP count hasn't magically jumped down from last year, I just removed the kid projects from it.  They don't want to work on them and I'm tired of counting them against my own goals.  Now, onto the sewing!  With all the pressure of the holidays off, I spent many hours in my sewing room relaxing. Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 10 WIP List at end of month: 11 Untouched in 2022: 5 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Christmas Zephyr (November 2021) - Will be revealed as part of the Zephyr Quilt-Along kick-off in two weeks! Whisper Quilt Challenge (January 2022) - My guild is doing a game of "telephone" with mini quilts and January was my month to make one. I can't share this until later this spring when the game ends! Quilts Started Postage Stamp Quilt - My 2022 personal project designed to use up and prevent new scraps. This is a leaders and enders quilt with a hard deadline of January 1,

I announced the  Zephyr  Quilt-Along last month, and today I'm here to give some more details about the timeline for it.  If your New Year's Resolution is to clear out your stash, this is the perfect quilt for you!  Zephyr was designed to use up large pieces of fabric so it clears out big hunks of fabric quickly.  The blocks in the rainbow version above use almost a full fat quarter and the blocks in the smaller quilt use almost a full fat eighth.  All those pieces that you've cut into a little bit here or there will work perfectly for this quilt pattern.  And the half blocks on the side use even less so smaller scraps can be used up as well! Let's jump right in to the dates, and then I'll give you some information about the pattern: February 13th:   Pre-QAL blog post about alternate layouts February 20th:   Kick-Off post with layout thoughts   February 27th:   Cut Background Fabric March 6th & 13th:   Sew Full Scrap Sets

I'm kicking off my year by starting a personal project that I've long wanted to make: a postage stamp quilt!  This sounds like a modest goal, and it is, but I know that it's not the type of quilt I can make start to finish - I'll get bored cutting squares and need to do something a little more challenging.  But it also seems like a great leaders and enders project and I made the first block this morning: My stash tends towards darker fabrics so it will be interesting to see where this ends up!  As this is a personal challenge, I'm setting up some loose rules for myself: No black or low volume fabrics.  I want this to be colorful! Use solids!  My solid scraps always get left out of scrappy projects and they are getting out of control.  This time they are being included! Fabrics can be used more than once - no stressing that each square is unique.  I'm planning on having 3,575 squares in this quilt - there are going to be repeats! The project ends on January 1, 20