Hi fellow quilters, it’s been raining most of the week here, and I must say the garden is simply singing at the top of its voice. We’ve been in a drought situation for more than 5 years and it seems that at last the skies are filling with fat, gray bulging clouds, just busting to burst on us. I know some of you are really suffering with shocking weather and conditions and my heart goes out to you. It’s a funny old climate the world over it seems.

I posted the final article of my two-fold piece on UFO’s last Sunday and have received a large amount of feedback from you, both in the Forum http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=367818#Post367818 and through your emails. I think my article has allowed so many quilters to think more positively about their crafting, and how they spend their time doing it. There are two things we simply cannot buy in this world; one is time and the other good health. So it’s up to us to stay in control of both these precious commodities and make the utmost of what we have.

Here’s the link to the first part of the article on UFO’s. http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art23590.asp and here’s the link to the second part: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art23943.asp

Please consider making a contribution to this discussion on the forum. There are lots of different ideas coming in about how we feel about our UFO’s and how we deal with them. One reader commented that she is working on her mothers UFO’s after her mother recently passed away, and this has been a huge comfort to her. That’s certainly an angle I didn’t consider.

As you know I like to include a little “gift” to my newsletter readers each week and this week I’d like to pass onto you an idea about how to display your precious items. The precious items I’m talking about today are antique or special buttons.

An Antique Button Book

Purchase some velvet, corduroy or similar plush style of fabric and cut it into A4 size sheets (same as writing paper dimensions).

On each sheet (or page) display your precious buttons by sewing them to the fabric. You can choose to show them in patterns, in color ways or simply sewn on at random.

Once all the buttons are sewn to the pages, place two pages together (wrong sides facing) and hand stitch them together using fancy stitches and embroidery threads.

Once you have enough to create a book, machine sew the sheets together to create a book with leaves.

You may create a cover for your book in any form that takes your fancy.

This book makes a very interesting coffee table book and is a tidy neat way of storing and showing off your precious buttons.

Cheerio for now, I’ll write again next week.



Judie Bellingham, Quilting Editor
http://Quilting.bellaonline.com

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