BluePip Designs

May seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye.  The month started with a long, fun visit from my mom, and ended with me trying to do all the things I've been putting off before the kids are off for the summer*.  Add in some nice weather, and I feel like I'm barely spending any time at all in my sewing room.  I was very motivated to finish my Oz quilt, even if I didn't quite get the binding on, and I spent some time working on a new pattern too!  And, of course, since the Oz top was done I had to start a brand-new quilt-along to take its place! * Yes, pictures and a blog post about the postage stamp quilt are on this list! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 11 WIP List at end of month: 13 Untouched in 2023: 4 Active QAL Projects: 3 Quilts Finished Meeple Tablerunner (May 2023) Quilts Started Hello, Spring! QAL  - A new quilt pattern and quilt-along from one of my favorite designers, Pen+Paper Patterns!  I started sl...

A quick post today with a project that was made by special request: a Meeple table runner! All of my children are huge fans of board games and love the Meeple pattern.  When my son made his wooden cabinet in woodshop class this year, he engraved a Meeple into the top, but then asked me to make him a table runner/giant coaster to protect the top. I printed off the 6" Meeple pattern at 60% so that the stuff that lives on top of his nightstand (lamp, tissue box, random Pokemon cards) doesn't cover it up.  He picked all the fabrics and asked for the same quilting as the Meeple Colorblock Quilt - easy peasy.  For the back, he wanted flannel so we used a piece leftover from the Blue Zephyr quilt. The table runner has custom dimensions so it is a half-inch smaller than the top of his cabinet.  We all use those metal water bottles and it's nice to have a big target when you are taking a drink in the middle of the night.  I love sewing things for my kids, and it's an ...

Only 41 days to go until one of my favorite quilt-alongs of the year starts: 100 Days 100 Blocks .  Ange has a brand-new pattern this year and I can't wait to dive in and make it.  This will be my ninth time participating in this quilt-along!  But first, I need to share quilt number eight: the Black and White Kinship Quilt! This quilt started, oddly enough, with the backing fabric.  I had purchased a wideback online for another project (I don't even remember which one anymore) and decided that it didn't work with the top.  It got put into a box and largely forgotten. My mother-in-law saw it when she was visiting and told me that the only top that it would match well was a black-and-white top, and I knew instantly it was going to go with my next 100 Days quilt.  I like to have a loose theme for each one (they are all scrappy) and black-and-white was one I hadn't tried before. I was also excited because I had a lot of black-and-white novelty prints, like the...

A pretty slow month in the sewing room.  We were blessed with a week of summer weather so I spent a lot of time outside enjoying the sunshine instead of cooped up in my sewing room.  It was so nice to walk without a sweatshirt and get on my bike for the first time this year!  I'm working on my summer plans and looking forward to both more of the nice weather and some relaxed sewing. Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 12 WIP List at end of month: 11 Untouched in 2023: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Black and White Kinship (July 2022) Quilts Started None! Quilt Progress (4 WIPs touched) Scrap Cabinet - This quilt will be made up of twelve sets of ten blocks each, or 120 blocks total.  I completely finished two of the sets, plus made six more, for a total of 26 blocks.  This is my new leaders and enders project, but it's moving much quicker than I expected! Sew Place Like Home  - The Wicked Witch and ...

April is almost over and today I'm checking in with my goal for the month : finishing at least six projects from the pile of small projects (most of them cross-stitch) laying around my sewing room. I started off by making a set of mug rugs for a wedding shower present.  The registry had a number of tea-themed items on it, so some tea from a local store and a hand-made set of mug rugs tied everything together and made a nice gift! The squares are leftovers from my postage stamp quilt  (finished photos and a blog post are on my to-do list).  Both the bride and groom love cats, so the backs are the last scraps of this cat-themed fabric. Next, I moved on to my small cross-stitch projects.  I did about one of these a week over the course of the month.  The hardest part of finishing them was picking fabrics to compliment the designs!  I've tried finishing projects in hoops before, but I just prefer the look of them in mini quilts.   The pictures go in the or...

Welcome to my monthly recap of all the projects I worked on this month! I severely underestimated how much sewing time my pattern release and spring break would take away from me so it's a shorter list than normal, but sometimes that's just how it goes! Quilt Tally WIP List at beginning of month: 11 WIP List at end of month: 12 Untouched in 2023: 4 Active QAL Projects: 2 Quilts Finished Fair Day (March 2023) Quilts Started Scrap Cabinet - I first saw the Scrap Snap pattern when I was linking up my January OMG finish , and it's been hanging out in my head ever since.  When I was cleaning up the sewing room after finishing my pin banner , I looked at the sewing machine, saw the red thread already threaded, and couldn't resist starting this project any longer.  I'm not going to share a picture right now, but the quilt is called "Scrap Cabinet" because I am restricting myself to ONLY use fabric that's already ...

A lovely, quick project to share with you today.  A few months ago my son received a small pin for his participation in stage crew and over spring break he did a lettering project to earn a high school letter for drama!  He's devoted many hours to the crew this year (at least as many as I have to quilting) and we're so proud of him.  He doesn't want a letter jacket, but he does want a special way to display his awards in his room so I offered to make him a pin banner. He won't get the actual letter until sometime in May, but when he does all I have to do is sew it on and he'll have a wonderful keepsake.  Since he's very artistic too, we made this into a group project.  We looked at different examples of banner shapes and sizes online and he was able to measure a letter that was on display at his school.  From there, he made me a construction paper template of exactly what he wanted. He was thorough enough to give me actual angle measurements and lengths, bu...

Hello!  I'm back today with another version of the brand-new  Fair Day quilt pattern.  This version is called Bright Day because the two main colors are neon! This is actually the first version of the quilt that I made.  It's a smaller baby-sized quilt because I was working off of my original rough draft and my quilt math was wrong.  I didn't even realize I had done my calculations on a 12-block layout until I was trying to lay everything out to match my mock-up.  I didn't have enough fabric to make four more blocks and my accent fabric didn't work with the other three colors, so this cute baby quilt is what I ended up with!  I do love these colors together so I have no regrets.  It's still adorable and will make some baby very happy one day! The back of Bright Day comes from two other quilts: the Alice in Wonderland Challenger Quilt  and the Wake Me Up Watermelon Quilt .  That makes three quilts in a row with a scrappy, scavenged back ...

I'm pleased to introduce the newest BluePip Designs pattern today.  Meet Fair Day ! Recently I've become fascinated with combining small blocks together to form larger patterns, and Fair Day is my first successful experiment.  All of the blocks are pieced traditionally and the pattern comes together quickly. It feels like I am stuck in an endless winter this year (it's snowing right now as I'm writing this and there's more predicted for later this week), but the colors and patterns in Fair Day make me think of the county fair in the summer time which is how the quilt got its name.  I've never actually entered anything in the fair, but I'm considering entering this one - maybe it can win a real ribbon! I've been digging deep into my stash this year and the blue background fabric is one that I've had forever.  It is a Grunge-like Moda fabric from before Grunge was released.  The red, white, and yell...

Today I'm sharing a quilt that can be made from a single layer cake, no additional fabric required.  A lot of quilts that are made from precuts require purchasing additional yardage to round things out, but this one doesn't.  And, best of all, it's made with dinosaur fabric! Do you still remember your favorite dinosaur from when you were a kid?  Mine was the stegosaurus!  We used to sing the "I am a Stegosaurus" song in kindergarten and I might be humming it right now as I write this post.  When I first saw the Stomp, Stomp Roar fabric by Stacey Iest Hsu I was charmed and when Fat Quarter Shop asked me to make this shortcut quilt and the dino fabric was on the list of available layer cakes I was thrilled! I've actually wanted to make a dinosaur quilt for a long time, and I even bought fabric to do so, but I never found a pattern I liked enough to cut into it (aside for a few masks for my dinosaur-loving son).  I decided that one dinosaur quilt is probabl...