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!

Finally a finished quilt - Sea Breeze

It is the beginning of September and I have my first quilt finished this year. Finally. I'm so relieved!
I started this quilt two years ago, TWO years! The reason why this took so long is that I quilted this quilt twice. The first time I didn't like it, so I ripped it all out again.

But now that it's finished I really love this quilt!

My husband and I went on a bike ride to our local lake and took some photos in bright sunshine and a lovely breeze. For most of you the fabric line 'salt air' by Cosmo Cricket for Moda might be 'cold coffee' (as we Germans say) but I so love this fabric line!
For the back I used Carolyn Friedlander's cross hatch in red, and it's the widescreen fabric. This non-pieced quilt back almost felt like quilting for the lazy, but that's ok. It doesn't always have to be a fancy quilt back.

I went the safe route and quilted my favourite loopy loops, no experiments here! I didn't want to rip out quilt stitches again! I quilted it on a long arm in Dorthes's lovely shop lalala patchwork. It was the first time I quilted on a longarm and I really loved it! The stitches (thanks to the Bernina stitch regulator) are so even, I'm very pleased how this turned out!
Here's a link to a video of the quilting process! I was so excited that I forgot to take pictures.

I love the stripy binding! I found this great tutorial and that worked very well for me.

I always pictured Sea Breeze to be a summer quilt. Firstly because of the fresh summery fabrics but also because of the size. It's only 1.75 x 1.75m (63 x 63'') and since I always have a quilt on my couch this is perfect for summer evenings where just a little gorgeous quilt gives crinkly comfort.
The summer here in Germany wasn't the best but we have some beautiful summer days since two weeks, so no complaints!

The free PDF pattern is called 'summer in the park' and can be found here.

Linking this to Finish up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts
TGIFF!
My Quilt Infatuation

QuiP #7 - Triangle quilt 'Porcupine Playground'

I have started a new quilt! Since seeing this, this and this quilt I knew I had to make a triangle quilt.
I've cut my first triangles already last year, but I had so much other things on that they needed to wait.

Actually, I only had the intention to cut a few more triangles and lay them out and then this happened:

The quilt top is already finished! I think this was the fastest I ever made a quilt top. The triangles are isosceles and are 8'' wide and 10'' long. To cut all the triangles I made myself a cardboard template to avoid measuring all the time and possible mistakes. (It still happened some times though...so far for wanting to be super clever...)

Since they are sewn in rows this is a very speedy process. There is a lot accuracy required when sewing the triangles together though.

I followed this tutorial, but cut the tops of all triangles off by 1/4''. This way it was a lot easier to sew them together correctly.

And then I pressed the seems to one side, alternating the direction for each row. That way the seems come together nicely when sewing the rows together.

The quilt has already a name: Porcupine Playground.
I love the word porcupine, it sounds so nice to my German ears. The animal is kind of cute too and I love the band Porcupine Tree. So all this is very suitable for a triangle quilt and the name was quickly found.

This quilt is part of my to-do-list for 2016 and I'm happy to have started it!
The fabrics are Kona white, berry and cerise, Carolyn Friedlander's cross hatch in grey and plum (so beautiful, I bought exactly 20'' and all of it is used up now) and micro mod/ vertigo by Rob Bancroft for Cloud9 fabrics. This was one of the very first fabric I ever bought and I'm happy it's getting used now.
I also added some orange triangles to pep the whole thing up, that's Oakshott in orange.

I have already plans for the quilt back and will hopefully have this done in the next 2-3 weeks.
Can't wait. I love this quilt already!!

Crosscut Quilt Along - I'm taking part!

I will join my very first Quilt- Along! It's the Crosscut Quilt- Along by Debbie of 'A quilter's table'.

I have great admiration for Debbie and just love all of her quilts. She recently made this Crosscut quilt and I loved it.

She is now hosting a quilt along for a mini quilt of about 24'' and I thought, ok, I can do that! Even though I have a lot of other things on... but who hasn't?

This is my fabric pull and I'm pretty excited about it already.

I love olives and mustard colours and apart from the one on top and the cross hatch fabric none of these have been cut into! So no use of scraps for me here.

And that's the low volumes:

They're already cut into 10'' squares ready to be cut and sliced again.

The Quilt- Along starts Monday, July 25th 2016.Come join us!

I got inspired - turquoise as far as the eye can see

 My husband and I went on holidays recently to the south of Spain, Andalusia to be precise.

Hiking the Lake District 'El Chorro'

We stayed in a remote finca, what a beautiful, quiet place that was! The sun, the flowers and colours inspired me in so many ways, I spent two entire days sketching quilt designs and taking lots of photos.

I swear: this is not photo- shopped! It really was that turquoise!

Right after our holidays I took part in the 'Creative Sunday' sewing organised by the Modern Cologne Quilters. The topic was flying geese and I brought all my turquoise fabrics with me. A blog post about this meeting is coming soon!!

The pillow is now finished, here it is:

The pillow is made from 50 flying geese blocks, 3x6'' each. The finished size of the pillow is approx. 25x25''/ 65x65cm.

I quilted it with a loopy stitch and that turned out great! I used three different colours Aurifil 40wt, in light grey, turquoise and variegated mint.

These are so happy summer colours and reminds me of this beautiful place called 'El Arpa'

Our view from the terrace apartment.

I can highly recommend this place! I could write a whole travel blog post but that goes beyond the scope of quilts!

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

May/ June Bee blocks for Melanie

Right on time for the May/ June deadline I have these lovely Bee blocks finished for Melanie.

This is a paper pieced block called 'Wanta Fanta' designed by Blossom Heart Quilts. There is a free PDF downloadable on her website.

Melanie had her focus on red, purple and pink fabrics with a little orange and yellow.

Melanie even provided a PDF for the snow ball block to paper piece the whole block. You can download that here. There are also very detailed cutting instructions on Melanies' blog which really helped not to fiddle with fabric pieces, sewing them on the paper in super small stitches only to find out that these fabric pieces were too small...

I really like these blocks and I'm sure the quilt will turn out great!

It only was my third time doing paper piecing and I really enjoyed it.
Blocks are going in the post tomorrow!

Linking this to the Modern Cologne Quilters and Crazy Mom Quilts.

I'm going to QuiltCon!!!

I still can't believe it! I have registered yesterday for QuiltCon East in Savannah next February!!

I couldn't decide on lecturers so I went with the full four day lecture pass for more flexibility.

I didn't really feel like taking a class, but I booked one anyway. So that I'm not there and then thinking why I didn't book a class. So that's the 3-hour-class I booked: Quilt Remix: Turn a Traditional Block into a Modern Quilt with Riane Menardi of Vessel Quilts.

Oh, I can't wait! Hope to meet loads of people as well. If you're going to QuiltCon as well, get in touch!

March/ April Bee blocks for Magda

I just noticed that I hadn't posted about my bee blocks for Magda!
Magda was Queen Bee already in March/ April and picked these beautiful blocks for her quilt: 

The block is called 'Scrappy Mountain Majesties' and there is a free pattern available here.
Magda picked a lovely colour palette with dark blues, purples and turquoise.

I have actually started these blocks at a sewing meeting in Hamburg in March. It's the 'Modern Patchwork Treffen' organsied by my fellow bees Melanie and Allison.
If you live in Northern Germany and want to sew with some lovely ladies make sure to contact either of  these two and pop by!

Because my own sewing machine is very heavy and uncomfortable to carry I asked my Mum if I can have her sewing machine to bring with me to the meeting.

Isn't that a beautiful machine? It's probably older than I am but its working just fine! It has just a few stitch options but straight really is all you need. The presser foot pressure is adjustable (I cannot do this on my machine!), I can lower down the feet dogs and do free motion quilting (I tried it all out!) and it has a 1/4" sewing foot. How cool is that? Oh, and the extended sewing table of course is great for quilting.

All in all a very enjoyable sewing experience. Machine, location and company that is! I'm looking forward to seeing that quilt finished, I'm sure it will be great!

If I'm feeling all vintage I might try a mini quilt with this machine, from start to finish. She makes a good photo model, too :0)

Sewing block

Sometimes the work on a quilt seems overwhelming.

Do you know that feeling of slight frustration while working on a quilt? That feeling that there is no end to it and that this quilt will never be finished? Well, that happened to me.

I am in the middle of quilting the quilt for my husband and I'm kind of stuck. I have the very ambitious aim to quilt every block in a different style and different colours. All quilting is done on my home sewing machine although this could have been a better job for a long arm. (Thankfully Dorthe of lalalaPatchwork has one amazing machine now, so next time I'm that ambitious with my quilting I know where to go!!)

It's not that it's not looking the way I'm hoping for, I'm actually quite happy with the way it's turning out.
I just have feeling it takes forever. Maybe it's the colours? Grey, grey, grey, grey, grey black, oh and red!

We also have a lot of rain and thunderstorms here, summer just doesn't want to come.

I'm usually working on a few projects, but not too many. Too many unfinished projects make me feel unease and I loose focus. That also happend to me.

To distract me from my never ending quilt I started other projects. Too many projects for my taste.
I have three pillow cases in the making, I'm still seam ripping my Sea Breeze quilt every now and then, I'm playing with my design wall rearranging my tulip bee blocks and dreaming of at least three more quilts to make.

So I stopped blogging and I also stopped sewing. Sewing and writer's block, so to say. Creative slow down.

I think these 10 Tips to Instant Sewing from Debbie of a Quilter's table brought me back on track.
Time obviously is an issue. But I decided to take it slow and not put too much pressure on myself, sewing is supposed to be fun, isn't it? To be organised with that sometimes very little time is key.

So made a To Do List and will stick to it. Working my way through my projects making sure I have gratification and fun in small steps.
Because not sewing and not blogging is also not a solution!

So please go ahead and encourage me a bit, I think I need that right now  :0)
Thanks!
Linking this to Modern Patch Monday of the Modern Cologne Quilters and to Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts. 

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!!