Hello dear Bellaonline Quilters. It’s good to be home after being in Sydney for the past week – on business. As VP of our State Guild, I attended the Australian Council of Quilters Conference, together with my President Kate. It was a fantastic few days, lots of talking and networking and finding out how other guilds go about bringing information on quilting to their members.

Naturally we “did” a couple of fabric shops and I came home with some fantastic fabrics to go with the fantastic ideas rolling around in my head!

For the past two days I’ve spent a lazy time with my cousins Janet & Graeme, who have to be the worlds best hosts – pampering is their specialty and if they were a going concern I’m sure they’d have a 5 star rating!!

Thank you to all those wonderful readers who have contacted me with your thoughts and best wishes in the aftermath of the most dreadful bushfires in Australian history. I can’t tell you how comforting your messages have been and I’ll be posting them onto the many friends I know who are being affected by the tragedy. Unfortunately it’s an ongoing tragedy – still more than 100 souls are posted as “missing” and it’s a very slow process of going through the ashes of each and every home that has been affected.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what we – Bellaonline Quilters – may be able to do to help those that have lost everything. I’m going to post my ideas on the forum to get some feedback from you. Please pop over to the forum to add your suggestions on how we can help these people who have suffered so dreadfully. Here’s the link:
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=494848&#Post494848

It sure is good to be back home, I’ve got 10 more days to finish my “leaf” quilt. It’s going to be a close call I suspect, but I’ll give it my best shot.

I’ve posted two interesting articles for you over the past two weeks, the first being an article giving you some thirty free websites for making handbags and purses. Patchworked and quilted bags are very popular these days and I had lots of fun sourcing these sites for you. Here’s the link:
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8362.asp

Then in keeping with the Valentines Day I posted a lovely pieced heart pattern for you to have a go at, and it looks really great. Here’s the link to that free pattern for you:
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art19163.asp

Ok, onto my gift for you this week. I love the PB Textiles site and they have some lovely patterns available for you to down load for free!! I thought this one was appropriate for this week. It’s called BEAR HUG and that’s what I give all of you for your kind thoughts over this very sad time for many Aussies.
Here’s the link: http://www.pbtex.com/html/beautifuldaypat.html

Well, cheerio for now, I do hope this newsletter finds you all well and managing in these difficult times.
I’ll pop by next week, if you'll have me.

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

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