Block M Quilts birthday and meeting great people

My blog turned two at the beginning of March! It actually feels a lot longer that I started sewing and quilting. That possibly is because so much happened in these two years. I made 10 quilts, 1 table runner, 2 mug rugs, 3 pillows, lots of zipper pouches and other little sewing projects.

But most importantly I made friends.

Whether it is virtually through linky parties on other blogs, Flickr, or other social media there are so, so many nice people out there in this quilting community. And the ones who stopped by and commented on my blog posts are so much appreciated.

But meeting quilt crazy people in person is a real highlight! I followed an invitation by the newly founded Modern Cologne Quilters on a Saturday in early March. They had only started out as a quilt group last summer and had the great idea to invite quilters from the greater Cologne area to come and gather.

We met in Dorthe's lovely fabric shop lalala patchwork in Bensberg.

The shop is absolutely lovely and Dorthe has fantastic fabrics, if you're in the area make sure to stop by or visit the online store here.

About 40 quilty people were there and talked about the best batting to use, what sewing machines they have, exhibitions they visited and much more.

There was a 'show & tell' and a great variety of quilts were presented. I brought three of my quilts with me, Regatta, Plus One and October.

I had a great time at the meeting and that was not the last time I met these lovely people! I didn't take that many photos, I was too busy chatting and buying fabrics!!!

You can read up on some blog posts about this event here, here and here.

I don't want to miss out to mention that I also found wonderful ladies for my quilting bee, the Quilty Circle of Bees, and I have just met some of them at a sewing meeting in Hamburg, blog post to follow!

Linking this to Modern Patch Monday.

A pillow for a friend

Sometimes projects just have to happen, like this pillow here:

This was a spontaneous idea we had as a quilting bee and that's also the first finished project we made.We wanted to make a pillow for a friend and opted for this beautiful raspberry kiss block by Wooden Spoon Quilts.
We loved the colour pallete of the finished pillow in the tutorial and each of us made 5 blocks in yellow, orange, red, pink and purple. The pillow is approx. 60 x 60cm/ 23x23'' big and fluffy.

Each of us contributed materials as well such as the batting, zipper, the back fabrics, thread and I (as the Bee Momma) put it all together.

I opted to do the loopy loop free motion quilting rather than straight lines as the tiny blocks from 5 different people did have differences in size but overall the pillow looks super lovely and I'm sure it will be well received.

I'm feeling very proud having accomplished a little side project as a bee with my great girls from the Quilty Circle of Bees. 

 Linking this to Finish up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and Modern Patch Monday at the Modern Cologne Quilters.

QuiP #6 revisited - Halo 27q

My husband loves music.

He started listening to music from an early age and is still constantly looking for interesting new bands and releases. Our house is full of tapes, Vinyl, and CDs... preferably special editions.

He never (illegally) downloads music but rather pays for the physical product because he knows how much work and effort goes into making music and how much musicians struggle these days trying to make a living out of it (unless you sell a million copies of your albums). In the early 1990s he has been in an industrial rock band called Arcane Asylum and fulfilled a life long dream by writing his own songs, performing on stage and designing the band's EP covers and gig posters.

Emmet O'Connell and Gerry Owens - Arcane Asylum 1992

Not only does he buy music, he also goes to concerts - a lot. He took me to many, many gigs as we lived in Dublin, Ireland and introduced me to bands I had never heard of. Not that I haven't been to concerts before but the variety of bands we went to see, especially from alternative bands, opened up a whole new world for me.

There isn't any particular music style you could place his taste in. If you were to look at his iPod you wouldn't believe it's the same person listening to all of the music which is saved on it.
But there is one style he is particularly drawn to, and that's electronic music.

And there is one band in particular he is a huge fan of: Nine Inch Nails.
As a real music nerd he, of course, still has old concert tickets from the time he lived in London, UK like these ones:

Tickets in the early 90s cost 7.50£... I guess everyone starts off somewhere...
We've been to New York in 2008 and also visited his brother in Canada as I first saw a show by NIN in Toronto and was blown away. It was supposed to be their last show.. thankfully it was not.

Last year I had the idea of making him a quilt and I wanted to incorporate his favourite band logos in it. Turned out there aren't that many band logos which you can sew, so I had asked him  how we can design his quilt. Very quickly we selected the beautiful graphics from NIN's album 'The Slip' (aka 'Halo 27') designed by the incredible talented Rob Sheridan. Every song has a different graphic, which nicely appears on the iPod when you play them. And they come handy in squares and 'sewable' forms.

So we printed the individual graphics, my husband picked all the fabrics and assigned the colours to the song graphics.

I wanted the squares for the quilt to be 20x20'' so we printed the graphics out to roughly half the size. I measured and calculated and improvised a lot to get the proportions right.

Most of the graphics were really easy to sew. With some I needed to do some pretty unconventional measures like partial seems and such.. and I even did my own paper piecing pattern!!! Who would have thought!

I am pretty smitten by how the quilt top looks and I can't wait for the quilt to be finished. I am working on the quilt back right now and will hopefully bast and start to quilt soon. I will reveal more photos of the finished quilt when we found the right location to take photos.

My husband names most of my quilts and of course he named his own one: Halo27q.

Linking this to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.