BluePip Designs

My final recap post of 2022!  December is traditionally a slow sewing month for me, and this year was no different.  I have no regrets, except for maybe the quantity of homemade cookies that I ate!  I did make good progress on three different projects and I'm looking forward to spending more time in my sewing room during January. Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 11 WIP List at end of month: 11 Untouched in 2022: 1 Active QAL Projects: 1 Quilts Finished None. Quilts Started None! Quilt Progress (4 WIPs touched) Postage Stamp Quilt - December is the month when my year-long personal project was supposed to end and I am very close - only seven blocks to go!  Everyone knows that the year doesn't really end until winter break is over so I'm giving myself two bonus days to finish this "in 2022". Rainbow Blossom Quilt - The last two blocks for this quilt (a pink seashell and the wo...

Another fun quilting year is over!  Almost all of my sewing this year was from quilt-alongs old and new or my own patterns.  My list of finishes is smaller due to real life being bigger, but I did so something crafty every day this year (quilting, cross-stitching, baking, and/or drawing), even if it was only for five minutes on the couch at the end of the night. 2022 Goal Recap 1. Be mindful in what I start.  I'm giving myself a passing grade on this one!  Only three of the quilts I started this year aren't done and all of them are in good shape to be finished quickly.  Two should be done in January and the third is a monthly quilt-along that's up-to-date! 2. Three pattern releases.  A big fail!  I only released one pattern ( Meeple ) and it was more of a niche personal project (limited audience appeal).  On the plus side, I love the quilts and projects I've made with it! 3. Harry Potter Quilt of Doom .  I started off strong o...

I'm a sucker for anything "old" - I loved hanging out at our local museum when I was a kid and I drag my kids to our local history museums as often as they'll let me.  I recently listened to a podcast about harvesting ice in the 1880s and none of it was new to me because I watched the ice harvesting video (with actual footage!) so many times as a kid that I practically had it memorized.  Needless to say, when Lindsay at Pen+Paper Patterns released her Just My Type pattern , I knew instantly that I was going to make it! All of the letters are traditionally pieced, and the background of each is a different low-volume print, alternating between black and white and colorful.  The "j" looks overwhelmingly red in this photo, but it's more subtle in person.  I really wanted to make the typewriter a fun aqua color, but I also didn't want it to steal the show, so a light gray it is.  The background is a stashed out-of-print Tula Pink fabric (Seed Stitch) tha...

November was all about small progress on lots of projects.  I took a good look at everything on my WIP list as I determined what I'm going to try and finish in 2022 and what goals I want to make for 2023.  I like to keep December open for fun sewing only - there's too much going on for tight sewing deadlines! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 12 WIP List at end of month: 11 Untouched in 2022: 1 Active QAL Projects: 1 Quilts Finished Just My Type (May 2022) Meeple Pumpkin Quilt (Halloween) Quilts Started None! Quilt Progress (10 WIPs touched) Sew Place Like Home - The sweetest little Tin Man and his eight matching poppy blocks are done.  I used seven different gray solids to sew him together and had tons more that didn't make the cut, but his heart patterned with tiny numbers is my favorite part! Black and White Kinship  - Eight more blocks made this month, and all 100 are done!  Sewing these toge...

One of my 2022 goals was to touch every single one of my WIPs*.  The year is almost over and I was five projects away from this goal at the beginning of the month.  Some of them had been untouched for so long, they were practically at UFO status!  My November mission was to look at each of them at least once.  I'm going to go through them in the order I pulled them out. Rainbow Blossom (January 2019) My first untouched project was practically finished. It only needed two more text blocks, maybe a filler block, and a little bit of assembly. I already had the fabric picked out for the next block, so starting here was an easy decision.  I made my "twinkle" block and did a little assembly to set it in where the yellow fabric is laying in the photo above. I still need to make the "create" block and I'm stumped on which fabric to use.  Kristy also posted a teaser picture of one of her new patterns for the nex...

 Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and Happy Thursday to everyone else! When I made my Meeple colorblock quilt earlier this year, I accidentally sewed two of the green meeples on an orange background.  Since my vision for the quilt was one of each color combination, I immediately set the second block aside with the thought that maybe I'd make it into a Halloween pumpkin mini quilt. The idea stuck with me and for all of October I thought, "I should really make that pumpkin mini quilt", but I never made the time.  Finally, it was Halloween and sewing a Halloween-themed project sounded like a fun way to celebrate!  I made my pumpkin mini and took a staged picture of it that I loved. It took another week or so for it to be quilted and bound, at which point the pumpkins had been discarded and snow had arrived, leading to the indoor photo that leads this post.  It's also a fall pumpkin quilt now that works for both Halloween and Thanksgiving! There isn't ...

Happy Halloween!  October was a very successful quilting month for me: I finished both of my quilty gifts on time and made excellent progress on my many on-going projects.  I'm not planning on any major handmade gifts for Christmas so my focus for the last two months of the year will be clearing things out of my WIP list so I have a cleaner slate going into next year. Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 14 WIP List at end of month: 12 Untouched in 2022: 5 Active QAL Projects: 3 Quilts Finished Piano Scarf (September 2022) Epic Rainbow Bowtie Quilt (September 2022) Quilts Started None. Quilt Progress (6 WIPs touched) Just My Type  - The top is pieced! I'm planning on custom quilting this one, so it won't be a quick finish, but I should still have it done by the end of the year.   Black and White Kinship  - This QAL just flew by - there are only eight more blocks to make!  I finally decided on...

My dear, sweet cousin is due with her first baby on Christmas Eve and last weekend we celebrated with a baby shower.  The weather was unseasonably warm and we were able to sit outside and talk and talk for hours.  Many family members flew in from out-of-town and we had such a lovely time.  Of course, I had to make a baby quilt for her! This scrappy beauty is based on the Epic Bow Tie pattern by Heritage Threads in Issue 22 of Make Modern magazine. I shrunk the blocks down because it was a baby quilt, which also gave me the advantage of being able to use mini charms for some of the "white" squares.  Some of the white fabrics do repeat, either the same pattern in different color ways or multiple of the exact same fabric, but never any too close together.  They have not shared the baby's name yet, but the "M" represents their last name. Since this is a winter baby, I backed the quilt in a yellow flannel print.  Yellow is my cousin's favorite color, so I quilt...