Busy Fingers have I at present, with lots happening both in my craft world and family world. I caught up with my daughter last week whilst she was in town on a conference. Managed to get a two hour mother-daughter chat in before our darling arrived and enjoyed a lovely meal and lots of laughter together. I miss my daughter not being in my everyday life – she lives about 9 hours from here. I guess it makes you really be judicious about the topics that you cover when you are together – no time for day to day chit chat. It’s that chit chat that I miss, as well as her very funny sense of humour. She really cracked us up, telling us stories about her recent horse riding attempts. She was a ballerina in her first 20 years, so the transition is interesting to say the least!

I’ve also been busy helping my quilt guild, with valuation day. We had 11 quilts to value, which is a lot between two groups of 3 valuers. I attended as a gopher, and thoroughly enjoyed the day. It’s very interesting hearing the valuers talking amongst themselves, and the things that they look for to help them to come to a valuation. Each quilt is dealt with individually. If you ever get the chance to sit in on a quilt valuation day, I thoroughly recommend it.

Another reason my fingers are busy is that my embroidery group is gearing up to make some goodies for a charity table towards the end of the year. We have lots of things to make and I’m busy making pincushions. I don’t know about you but I can’t have enough pincushions. I have different pins for various genres of quilting; flower pins, appliqué pins, glass headed pins and so forth. I like to keep them separate in their own pincushions.

I posted a massive list of free fabric gift bag patterns on the Bellaonline Quilting website last week. I had a request from a reader for a fabric paper bag pattern, so I went surfing and found some very interesting free patterns for you. Here’s the link: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art1123.asp

My gift to you this week is a pincushion pattern, but it’s a little different, it’s a slide show. The pictures are the best I’ve found, very easy to understand. The instructions can be found in the top right hand of the screen, just click on show info to get the instructions. This mini pincushion is very useful – I have one for my petite appliqué pins and it’s small enough to put into the littlest pocket.

Here’s the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/verybigjen/sets/72057594099768007/

Well, that’s all from me this week, I hope this newsletter finds you all well and happy and keeping busy. Speak next week.
Cheerio for now



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

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