2014 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop - Hello and Welcome

Hello, and welcome. I’m Wendy and I’m a modern hand quilter from New Zealand.

What does that mean? It means I make modern quilts and I hand quilt them with colourful Perle 8.

I’m part of the New Bloggers’ Blog Hop hosted by Plum and June, and my blog is one of the lucky ones to be featured this week. (Please check out the others at the end of this post when you’re finished here.) We've all been encouraged to reveal a bit more about ourselves, so I'll jump right in with a few lesser known facts about me:

·         I’m Wendy Welsh and I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I just love it here. It’s a beautiful clean green country, with great beaches, bush and mountains, and 5 million friendly people.

·         I met my husband during an audit on a tropical island. We were both selected to audit the Cook Island’s Government in Rarotonga, and stayed there for a whole month. The weekends were so hard – swim first, or sip a cold drink on the beach for a while?  

Six members of the audit team taking a break - I"m second from left and my future husband is in the centre. 

·         We’ve got two teenage sons aged 14 and 16, but I’ve promised not to mention them on the blog, so I’ll say no more about that!

The one and only photo you'll see of my family - taken at a wedding in March 2014

·         I’m a Chartered Accountant / CPA, but I’ve also spent a number of years working in IT on financial management systems. I currently work for the New Zealand Institute of Patent Attorneys.

·         My dream holiday would be a trip to Melbourne to watch Roger Federer play Rafael Nadal in the final of the Australian Open. That's looking more possible since Wimbledon 2014.

·         My favourite movies are Bridget Jones’s Diary 1 & 2, and Love Actually (note the common theme of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant)

·         I love embroidery as well as quilting, and feature both on my blog.

Now to show you some of my quilts. 

First up is the quilt I made earlier this year for the Pantone Radiant Orchid challenge.  I started with the poppies fabric, and chose other fabrics to complement it. I hand quilted in the ditch and then quilted diagonal lines in Perle 8. You can read more about it here.

 

Radiant Poppies - made for the 2014 Pantone Challenge

Next is my Flower Garden wall hanging. This is wool felt applique flowers, hand stitched onto the background. I really enjoyed making this quilt and have since made cushions using the same method. I loved doing all the hand stitching in this quilt. 

Flower Garden

The last quilt I'll feature here is the black and white tumbling block quilt that I made for my younger son. I chose the Kaffe Fassett pattern, and he chose the colours. It was mathematically challenging, but I like a bit of a challenge in my quilt making. You can read more about it here.

Black and White Tumbling Blocks

So that's a quick trip through some of the quilts I've made. You can see more on the Finished Quilts tab at the top of my blog. My quilts take time, so I don't finish many quilts in a year, but I'm always working on something, and I like to share my progress on my blog.

Before you go, we've been asked to share a couple of tips with readers. So here are my tips:

Blogging tip. If you don’t already use a system such as Bloglovin or Feedly to follow blogs, I’d really encourage you to do so. I only started using Bloglovin to follow blogs earlier this year, but wish I’d done so ages ago.  I had thought I’d receive emails every time someone I was following posted something, but that’s not the case. You can choose how often you get notified – instantly, daily or not at all. If you choose not at all, you just see a list of unread posts from the blogs you follow when you login. 

Quilting tip. My quilting tip for you – don’t rush, and make your pinning and seams as accurate as possible.  No one likes to open up their seam and see that it doesn’t match where it should. A few more minutes spent measuring and pinning can save you unpicking later.  

my embroidered Goldwork Elizabethean 'W'

I've met some great online friends through blogging, so if you'd like to leave a comment, I’d love to know where you’re visiting from, and what project you’re currently working on (don’t list them all though, just your top one please).

Thanks so much for visiting. I hope you feel you know me a little bit more now, and might come back to visit again in the future.

I'd really encourage you to visit these blogs too. They're all members of the New Quilt Blogger Blog Hop and have written special introductory posts too:

Sarah @ Berry Barn Designs

Liz @ Green Cheese Quilting

Janet @ Simply Pieced

Ruth @ Charly and Ben's Crafty Corner

Kristyn @ Melon Patch Quilts

Joanna @ Riddle and Whimsy

Linh @ Calling All Stitchers

Alida @ Tweety Loves Quilting

Rachel @ Quiltineering