#NGAQB – May

The #NGAQB (No Girls Allowed Quilt Bee) King for May was Paul Hallinger. He asked us to make him two 8.5″ signature blocks that represent us. I utilised some of my fave quilt tools: squares, ombre, value, small piecing, and sparkles! Read on for Paul’s story. 

I grew up in a rather mundane childhood, watching Japanese cartoons and Dr. Who. Oh, and Monty Python. I was one of those ‘studious’ types who would much rather take home a 100 book reading list for the summer. If my aunt would lend me her books on UFOs, psychic phenomenon, and otherworldly things, I would fit them in alongside The Great Gatsby. I took up some levels of sewing and crochet in my teens, mostly because I lived next to my grandmother and aunt, both of whom spent time doing these things. I took a sewing class at a local fabric store (yes, they existed back in the Stone Age) and made a really cool-for-the-times patchwork denim vest. Someone in my family still has it!

I graduated from high school and went off to college and decided that if majoring in forestry meant I had to learn latin, well, that was not going to happen. So after a fun-filled year at a small liberal arts college in northern New Jersey, I dropped out. Afterwards, I worked at various jobs, hung out at clubs with friends, got into CBGBs, became enamored with punk, double pierced my ears, got a tatoo, and colored my hair a lovely shade of blue! I would not trade those life experiences for anything.

In my mid-twenties I went back to college, while working full-time. I majored in sociology and I am that person in the room who doesn’t say much but is intrigued by everything going on around him. I spent two years getting my masters in California, buggered off the PhD (eternal student-dom was not for me) and took a job with the Federal government in 1991. Been there as a day job ever since. 

I have been with my one true love for 25 years now – our first date involved a trip to the dump. A true romantic, that one! We both remember the movie we went to see and the fact that I didn’t go home–and never left much after that either!

I took up quilting in 1992 or so – I had gone to Europe on a wonderful two week adventure and upon returning to the states blew out a couple of lumbar discs when I grabbed a suitcase out of the trunk of a car. I was out of work for a few months and was going absolutely bonkers counting the ceiling tiles when a friend showed me how to cross stitch and then how to do quilt stitching by hand. I then asked her to show me how to make a quilt. I was using a lovely White sewing machine that I had bought at a ‘school over-ordered’ sale. I took it in for service and was amazed at the Bernina sewing machines, so I bought one then and there! And then another. And then another. I have three. Two embroider (another favorite of mine), and another is a Juki (I like it for the more industrial needs!)