halo27q

I'm very happy to present my husband's quilt: halo27q

This is my third entry into the Bloggers Quilt Festival and this couldn't come at a better time. I started this quilt last August 2015 as a birthday present for my husband and this year in September it's finished. You can find the process of fabric choice and block making here.

The quilt is all about one of my husband's favourite bands Nine Inch Nails and the graphics taken from their 7th studio Album 'The Slip' (aka halo 27) released July 2008.
I cannot take credit for the design, I just made a quilt out of it. The graphics were designed by Rob Sheridan, the Creative Director for Nine Inch Nails.

Each song of the album has an own graphic. Here are the quilt blocks, each of them 20 x 20'' and each quilted differently:

TRACK 06     I     HEAD DOWN

Head Down stretches over three blocks of 20x20'', there are similar, long graphics in line with NIN's merchandise and it fits the quilt design quite nicely that way. 

TRACK 03     I     LETTING YOU

Some of the original graphics have red lines and I just quilted them in the same rough way.

TRACK 09     I     THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING

I created my own paper piecing template for this block. I left this block for last because I thought this is the most complicated one and I'm quite new to paper piecing, but looking back it would have been so much easier and more precise to paper piece all the blocks. With those crass colour differences every little seam, which is only off by a bit, is very visible...

TRACK 10     I     DEMON SEED

The quilting is a big mix of free motion and  using my walking foot. The rough quilting is intentionally done. It was suppose to be not 'nice'. NIN's music is everything, but nice. It's rough, hard, emotional and sometimes even brutal. That's what I was trying to achieve with the quilting as well.  

TRACK 04     I     DISCIPLINE

For the binding I continued the design of the back of the quilt. So from looking at the front of the quilt you can guess that there is something on the back.

The back of the quilt is the interpretation of the design of the CD cover. I used cross hatch fabrics for both the light and darker areas. The binding intentionally is almost not visible.

TRACK 05     I     ECHOPLEX

That's my first time doing spiral quilting. I don't know if that was a good thing, but this was the very first block I quilted and because I cannot adjust my pressure foot pressure the whole quilt sandwich shifted and I needed to re-baste the entire quilt. Yep. That's why halfway through the quilting process I called it 'my never ending quilt' and here are my thoughts on it. Thanks again for the very encouraging comments!

TRACK 02     I     1,000,000

Because the quilting is quite dense some puckering happened, my thread broke loads of times and for this block alone I needed a whole afternoon.  Many, many threads needed to be buried and it just took forever...

TRACK 01     I     999,999

I used light and dense quilting to create a contracts between blocks as every song is different, too.

That block was fun! I just made a black box but I didn't want to have the iconic 'NIN' in black so I created the three letters with dense quilting lines. I learned that in Jacqui Gering's Craftsy Class 'Creative Quilting With Your Walking Foot'.

And lastly I used another iconic graphic of the band: the reversed 'N'. Looks so cool.
This block took about two days to quilt. I learned a lot about my sewing machine with this quilt. As I said, the pressure foot pressure cannot be adjusted so hefty puckering appeared while I was doing the first three parallel lines. So I ended up starting and stopping in the centre of the block with endless threads to bury...

But I couldn't be happier with this quilt. The different quilting gives the quilt a great texture and despite the simple blocks there is so much so see.

Even the back by it's own could be a quilt and you can tell every 'song' by it's cover.
I didn't use all the graphics, some were 'unsewable' at least with my abilities.

As for most of my quilts my husband came up with the name. Every NIN album has also 'halo' number.
The Slip is halo 27, so the name 'halo27q' was quickly found.

My husband had to put up with a lot of cursing and frustration from my side during the quilt making process. I was listening to all of the NIN albums while making the quilt, mostly to The Slip (just to get me in the right mood) and boy, I was as angry as Trent Reznor sometimes....
But most importantly my husband loves his quilt and I see us already sitting on the couch, me wrapped up in lovely, happy colours, he in dark looking all cool and cozy.

I'm linking this post to the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy Ellis. Go and check out all the other beautiful quilt and don't forget to vote! Thanks!