Guest Speaker, John Nielsen

Hi everyone, yesterday was Whangarei Patchwork & Quilters Club meeting day. We were very lucky to have John Nielsen as our guest speaker. For those who don't know John is a longarm quilter, based at Baylys Beach. John has only been longarm quilting for about 3 years, and has become well known for the high quality of his work.

John is originally from Denmark, but has lived in New Zealand for the nearly 20 years. He fell in love with patchwork and started making quilts. But soon found it too difficult, to quilt the large quilts he was making on a domestic sewing machine. So after a lot of research he decided to import a longarm quilting machine, and hasn't looked back since.

John recently taught at the 'New Zealand Quilting Conference' for longarm quilters in Cambridge. John's business is 'The Quilt Fairies'

John's talk was very interesting, and he bought a lot of his quilts to show too.

For someone who hasn't been quilting that long John has made some very complex quilts!

The quilting is exquisite on this quilt, click on photo for a closer look.

This is a very vibrant quilt, sorry the photo doesn't do it justice.

John's Amish quilts, I especially like the star below. The touch of purple mixed in with the pink, really made this quilt glow.

This quilt is made from some of John's old shirts! It's quilted with a silver thread so it sparkles too.

John's latest is a whole cloth quilt, made using cotton sateen, which has a very nice sheen. The quilting is to die for. Close up below.

Another couple of close ups. Click on them to 'embiggen'.

Thank you John, we all really enjoyed your talk and seeing all your lovely quilts, and being allowed to handle them as well.