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2017 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop

Blooming Quilters logo

Earlier this year I joined a group of other bloggers online to learn more about blogging and share within the quilt blogging community. This post tells about that group and also about this blog and a bit about me as part of the 2017 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop.

This Blog Hop and learning experience is being organised and run by 3 lovely ladies. They are

Yvonne of Quilting Jet Girl

Leanne of She Can Quilt

Beth of Cooking Up Quilts

Yvonne, Leanne and Beth also have some prizes available so have a browse visiting the blogs below and also theirs

Our group has been using the team communication tool called Slack and this has been new to me but easy to learn and very useful for the way our group works. Our subset of the main group is called the Blooming Quilters and we are all taking part in this Blog Hop that started a few weeks ago. Below you’ll find some more links to the others in the group who are sharing this week.

Who I Am

My name is Raylee and I am married to Thomas and we have four lovely growing young men in our family as well.  At time of writing our boys are 18, 16, 11, 10 years old.  They are in University, College and Primary school. We live in Canberra Australia, it’s starting to really cool down at present but the autumn colours are fantastic.

Our home consists also of a dog, cat, chickens and fish.  I love that I can cook with eggs from my own back yard and I know they are very fresh. It took me a little while to get used to the brighter colour of backyard eggs, not I love it.

I am really happy with this photo of me, it was done in a professional photo shot where Mum and I had some pictures done together. A special day where we got all made up and styled. I think we scrub up pretty well!

My sewing journey started when I was young and I watched Mum and would practice my spelling words to her while she sewed. I don’t remember not knowing how to sew, and do other crafts.  I’m a competent basic knitter, but it’s not my go to craft.  I enjoy seeing a project come to life as I embroider it or as a quilt grows, block by block. Perhaps it’s knowing that this thing I make will last longer than a short time and that people will get to enjoy the end item, quilt or stitchery.

I am a firm believer that if you are given a hand crafted item you are well loved.  Thank you Mum for my great start in the crafting world.

What Do I Do?

Aside from being wife and Mum, I am a long arm quilter and have been quilting for others since 2009.  I enjoy seeing all the quilts that come through my studio and love that I get to help in the process to completion.

I am also a business partner with my Mum in a Sewing/stitchery design business. We have now combined those businesses on this one page to make things easier for me as I maintain the website. I love our new logo. Here’s a gorgeous picture of my Mum from our photo session. My Mum is the one who taught me to sew and who has been my most staunch supporter as I grew that side of the business and now works with me as designer and chief production manager. Our aim for the blog is to share about the quilts I get to work on, the patterns we are creating and releasing and the fusion of embroidery and sewing/quilting. We are aiming to make this blog a great place to visit for info about quilting, embroidery and a whole heap of fun as well.

You can find our social media buttons on the right and we’d love for you to ‘follow’ us or sign up to our newsletter and hear all our news regularly.

Some of My Favourite Quilts

I have lots of quilts that I have enjoyed working on, many of my favourites are not actually mine as i spend more time quilting for others than sewing my own quilts. This is something I am trying to remedy.

The following pictures are some that I have been extremely pleased with the results of the quilting.

She’s A Rainbow, made by Angie Wilson
Oakshott wedding knot, made by Angie Wilson
Canberra Quilters raffle quilt, made by Barbara Cutmore and me, quilted by me.
Blue Gentleman, made and quilted by me for my husband Thomas

As you can see I do like to add a bit of texture with my quilting, I could share so many pictures but I’ll save them for another time. Needless to say I have a bit of fun with the quilts I get to work on.

My Blogging Tip to Share

At the moment my blogging mantra is “Done is better than perfect.”

This means I can always go back and improve the blog post later but I really just need to write what’s on my mind and share while I can rather than waiting for the perfect time or the perfect picture.  This is a work in progress but I think I’m getting more proficient.

My Sewing/Quilting Tip to Share

Perfectionism is not beneficial.  Having standards and working to your best ability are good things, but being paralysed by the fear that it will not work out or not be good enough is not helpful or productive in any sense.  Sort of follows on from the blogging tip doesn’t it.

My Nanna was a wise woman and would remind me with a saying “A blind man on a horse riding past would be happy to see that”  In other words we are are own worst critic and whilst not excusing poor workmanship, we can be too hard on ourselves.

An extra tip:  There are no quilt police!

If you have a tip you like to share please leave it in the comments, I’d love to read them.

Where to now? This weeks bloggers.

Part of our group have been posting each week, this week the bloggers are

Danette of Nettie Sews

Olivia of Pumpkin Hollow Quilting

Debbie of Quilt Knowlogy

This is the post where our group coordinator Yvonne has listed all the bloggers in the group. You can visit all their blogs via the links found within.

I am enjoying getting to know what everyone is creating and getting to know them all.  I hope you do too.  Enjoy the lovely pictures of quilts and crafty items.

Thank you for visiting, we hope come back regularly and see what we’ve been up to.
Please do let us know your best quilting or sewing tip in the comments.

 



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