I was Queen Bee for January/ February!

It was my turn in January/ February to be the Queen Bee for my Quilty Circle of Bees.

I chose a gorgeous pattern after seeing this quilt made by friends of Maureen Cracknell.
It's the Amsterdam pattern by Cloud 9 Fabrics and available for free as a download here.

I tested the block before I gave out instructions to my bees and these are the blocks I made:

And these are only a few of the amazing blocks I received from my really busy bees as they did a lot more blocks than I had asked for.

What a great bunch of flowers on my design wall! I only have to do two more blocks and then I can piece the quilt top already. This will be such a happy quilt and perfect to bring on spring!!

Thank you, Ladies!!

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.

Another divided basket for crochet hooks and wool

After I practiced on my own basket I could finally attempt the basket for my best friend Betty.

Betty loves everything green so the colour choice was out of question. Since Betty is also an avid knitter I wanted a basket for her wool and knit/ crochet projects. The green sheep fabric was just perfect!

I divided the front pocket into several sections so that e.g. crochet hooks can be placed into them. Every width of sheep was just the perfect size.

For the inside I opted, again, for light grey cross hatch fabrics and some nice green flowery fabrics for the basket divider.

I love how it turned out and hope Betty will too!

These baskets were more fun than I had anticipated and they are actually a lot bigger than I thought.
I will  definitely make more of those!

Linking this to Finish up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!
And Modern Patch Monday of the Cologen Modern Quilters! 

Divided basket - check!

I can strike off the second project from my goals for 2016: the Noodlehead divided basket.

I had actually planned to make my best friend one for her birthday but thought I should try this out before I do hers.

It turned out really nicely. I will use it for my crochet projects and wool.

I bought this pattern last year already and didn't dare to start it. I'm not sewing for that long and I honestly am very confident quilting but everything else, especially curved things and things I need to cut from templates, scare me a little. I was basically looking at this pattern the way a bunny stares at a snake!
I should trust my own sewing abilities a bit more!!

I used  the beautiful fabrics designed by Etsuko Furuya for Kokka, I just love the deer with the red glasses!
Accompanied by the beautiful red cross hatch fabric by Carolyn Friedlander.

For the inside I opted for the red pearl bracelets by Lizzie House and some mixed glasses fabric, all to go with the main outer lining fabric. Love it!

The basket for my friend is also finished and I'll post photos of it soon!

Linking this with the Cologne Modern Quilter 'Modern Patch Monday'!
And to Finish up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts! 

How to - roll up your binding while sewing

I thought I share another little tip today.

There are different methods of how to roll up your binding and this is how I do it:

I use a wooden spool, which I bought in a lovely fabric store in Dublin. For this baby quilt the binding wasn't too long, it does get quite full when it's a lap size quilt though, but it still works!

While sewing the binding to the quilt I place the spool on my lap. The binding rolls up nicely and lays already flat on the quilt. It works really well for me. Try it out!

What do you do with your binding?

Linking this to the 'Tips and Tutorials Tuesday' at Late Night Quilter.

And so the seam ripping begins....

I have started to rip the quilting stitches out of my Sea Breeze quilt... finally! I don't know why I've put this off for so long.
 

Ah well, yes I do know why... because it takes forever, it's destructive work and seems to be a reverse process. Taking something out you later put back in again.
But my post about my goals for the year really helped to get me started. I have removed the stitches from more than half the quilt and I'd say there is one more ripping session and I'm done!
Looking forward to quilt that baby properly!

Linking this to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

First finish in 2016!

It's only the first week of January and I have already my first finish done! It's the smallest of my goals for the year but that doesn't matter.

It's another open wide zipper pouch following Noodlehead's tutorial. And I've also found this super tutorial by Ros of Sew Delicious. I never knew where to have the zipper pointed while sewing the layers together, sometimes I did it correct, sometimes I didn't but never knew why my zippers looked different.  Now it's neat and tidy, great!


I used a coated fabric for the inner lining so that it's easy to clean.

This one is (again) for my Mum... I seem to make her a lot self made stuff recently but Mums always do so many great things that this is only a small way of saying 'thank you'!

Linking this to Finish up Friday with Crazy Mom Quilts.

Outlook for 2016

I've decided to share my planned projects for 2016, it's always good to have goals to work up to. I have similar feelings with my sport (rowing), if I don't have a goal or a regatta to train for, I don't train as regularly and hard as I could.

So, here comes:

1. Quilt for husband
I posted the fabric selection already here, I actually finished all the blocks of the quilt top this week and will assemble the quilt top today. I don't exactly know how to quilt it yet, but I hope to have this quilt finished this month. A QuiP is coming soon!

2. Triangle Quilt
I have started to cut triangles out of these beautiful fabrics and I'm all excited about it!

3. Sea Breeze
Remember this lovely quilt top? I have this quilted more than half way... and I don't like it! So I'm going to rip the quilting all out and do it again. I know that sounds crazy but believe me, I looked at this so many times, put the quilt away, looked at it again... still don't like it. That's something I feel I have to do otherwise I'm not going to enjoy the finished quilt.

4. Bee Quilt
It's my turn in January/ February with my 'Quilty Circle of Bees' and I have picked a lovely block pattern (more about that later). I hope to have this quilt also finished this year.

That's 4 quilts this year, theoretically every quarter one quilt. I think this is realistic and achievable.

There MAYBE is a 5th quilt (since the one for my husband is almost there, I have quilting bees who help me with the bee quilt and the Sea Breeze quilt sandwich is also done).
As I discovered quilts during my honeymoon in 2013 I went to Sew Modern in LA and bought lots of fabric. Lots. I honestly bought 3 yards (!) of all these and more. (Luckily there was the Memorial Day Special Offer!!)

I didn't know hat I was doing and had no idea how much fabric I need for a quilt (and of course ignored the  advise by the lovely lady who cut all the fabric for me). I made already two quilts of this fabric, one for myself and one for my Mum, but as the lovely lady in the shop said:' You're gonna make A LOT OF quilts out of these!' Yeah, what can I say, I probably will!

I'm also planning on making an open wide zipper pouch, (I have that done, see here) a divided basket (I actually made two! Here and here) and a super tote, all pattern by Noodlehead which I purchased a long time ago but didn't find the time and muse to make them.

I feel all good about these projects and looking forward to all of them (apart from the quilt stitch ripping business...). I will come back to this blog post to see how I'm doing and strike off things I have finished, yay. That's good!

What are your plans for the new year?