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!!

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!