Hi everyone, I’ve just made my second cup of tea for the day, so I’ve a chance to pop into your life for a moment and say hello. I do hope this email is finding you all well and happy, or at least coping with the busy time that we are enduring at present. I’m becoming more and more aware of how tough it’s getting for those living on the ‘edge’ so to speak. I attended a talk yesterday by the manager of a ‘day shelter’ for the homeless in my city. This shelter is open from 8:00am to 4:00pm each day and provides many services and acts of kindness for those who have no roof over their heads.

This talk has heightened my awareness of firstly how lucky I am, and secondly, how important it is to give hope to these homeless that someone really does care about them. I’ve been looking at an organizations site called Ugly Quilts (here’s the link) http://www.uglyquilts.org/ which provides sleeping bags-come-quilts for the homeless. We call them swags here in Australia, but what ever they are called; they provide an enormous amount of comfort to those that have to curl up under a bridge or bus shelter each night. I’m thinking of getting a group of us together to see if we can provide these in our local town.

I posted the final State Block on Sunday. Here’s the link for Wyoming. http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art5226.asp . Hope you like the block. I think it would look great in a quilt.

The forum’s been a little quiet of late, so I’m starting a new topic, here’s the link if you’d like to contribute. My topic is “What other uses do you have for your quilts?” It will be interesting to see what responses we get.
Here’s the link to the forum: http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=43&page=1

My gift for you this week is a little different, and infact, there’s two! Firstly, I received an email the other day from a reader who asked for information about children’s book with a Quilting Theme. Well, I surfed around for a bit and found these three lovely sites. I hope you enjoy having a look, and perhaps you have someone in your life who might appreciate a story about your passion in life. Here are the links.

http://www.antiquequiltdating.com/Children's_Quilts_and_Books.html

http://www.carolhurst.com/subjects/quilts.html

http://www.quiltmakersgift.com/about/index.htm

My second gift (and this one’s free) is a traveling ironing pad and iron cover. I teach many classes and it’s so difficult to transport your iron and board easily. This pattern from Husqvarna Viking is a beauty!!

http://web.archive.org/web/20051216121943/http://www.husqvarnaviking.com/education/pdf/ironingensemblewebsite.pdf

Well, that’s my cuppa finished, and time for me to take flight into the day. Again, I hope all’s well your end, and I’ll speak with you next week. Don’t forget you can contact me any time on this email address: quilting@bellaonline.com

Cheerio for now, and have fun quilting!!

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

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