another reason to try out my shiva painsticks

I bought these wooden shapes at our guild meeting last weekend. Murray coated them with a layer of polyurethane as there was a little bit of black coming off the sides of the shapes. The leaf shapes I want to stitch onto a little textile piece, but I think I'll use the other shapes to do rubbings with shiva paintsticks. They should work very well, don't you think?

Trev the Wondercat is not allowed on the beds. He never has been, and he knows this perfectly well. but for some reason he's decided he likes this quilt and tiptoes into the spare bedroom at eveery opportunity. He was so-o-o comfortable when I took this photo. He said "Mum, why don't you just make a trev-coloured quilt, then no one will notice if there is cat fur all over it!" Logical, I suppose.

using meander quilting design as applique

I've been working on my chooseday challenge this weekend. I had a heap of ideas but decided to play with this one. First I drew a meander pattern on a piece of A4 paper then coloured in part of it to make sure my idea would work.



Went over the lines with a fine black marker so I could see the line to trace it on the paper side of some fusible webbing that was also A4 size. I ironed the fusible webbing onto some plain black cotton fabric. Then the fun bit (not!) I cut out on the meander line - took ages to do. I wanted the background and the cut out bit to be whole pieces so I couldn't just cut in from the side to make it easier. Next step was to get two pieces of white homespun, also A4 size, and iron the cut-out piece of black onto one and the background piece of black onto the other.






Now I'm going to spend a day or two just looking at them while I decide what to do with them next. I really want to do heaps of embellishment, but I'm not sure what kind of embellishments I have that are black or white. I may have to introduce another colour to it.

I've been looking at some of the books on my bookshelf, and there are a few that I plan to read through again with new eyes. I'm becoming more motivated to actually choose a book and work through it (as opposed to just looking at the pictures ha ha). Here are some of them.

There are some more but I haven't taken photos of them yet. Do any of you find that you buy the most amazing books, and they just sort of languish on the shelf? Well, I think you should pick one and do something with it! (Miss Bossy Boots making an appearance there.) Maybe then I might do the same thing.

Chooseday Challenge topic for this month is...

>> OPPOSITE<<

There are many possibilities with this topic: hot and cold, big and little, happy and sad, opposite colours on the colour wheel, mirror images - the list goes on and on. I'm sure that every person who does this challenge will come up with a different interpretation of the theme. I'm looking forward to seeing what every one does with it!