Hi Quilters, welcome the Bellaonline Quilting newsletter for this week. It’s the first week of February (who stole January?) and we’re all getting back to “normal”, what ever normal is for you.

I finally bit the bullet last week and committed to a dead line for the completion of my “leaf” quilt. I’ve just about finished the embroidery of the veins on the leaves, and am now contemplating the final design of the corner blocks. I had a friend over the other day and we laid the quilt out on the lounge room floor and it was a real buzz to see it almost all together. I’m really proud of this one.

Anyway, I rang a very good professional machine quilter who lives in Toowoomba (about 100ks from here), who does a very, very good job and asked her if she would wave her magic over my quilt. So we’ve agreed to the end of this month as the deliver date.

So now, it’s full steam ahead, all non-sleeping moments will be spent getting this quilt top finished. Thank heavens, Kathy provides as part of her professional quilt service, the backing and the batting, so all I have to do is deliver the quilt. I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters, that this quilt is mostly leaves. In fact I’ve used 83 different greens for my leaves and I will, in a crazy moment, count how many leaves have been appliquéd. I’ve decided to call this quilt “Leaf it alone”.

So you all know what I’ll be doing over the next week, I hope you’ll all be busy creating and having fun with your passion of quilting.

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of reviewing a fantastic new book from Paula Nadelstern titled “Kaleidoscope Quilts – An Artist’s Journey Continues”. It’s a great book and I invite you to pop over to my review to find out more about it. Here’s the link: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art1708.asp

The forum has been a-buzzing with lots of subjects and comments being contributed. It’s a busy little village in itself and I love jumping on to see what’s going on. Here’s the link to the forums for you to have a look see:
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=43

So onto my gift for you this week:
I like to think of myself as the box queen. I love love love boxes, containers, tins and bags. I’ve found this fabulous website from Italy that has a whole manner of interesting items that you can download and use. All free of course. So here’s one of my favourites, a lovely gift bag, that’s easy as to make. Click on the download button and you can print out the template. You can enlarge the template for a bigger gift box. Enjoy!!

http://www.ideem.it/packaging/sacchetto-carta_vettoriale_150.html

That’s all for this week, keep the smile on your dial, those endorphins just love it!
Cheerio for now!

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