Fooling around

There hasn't been much quilting going on here since I finished the Olympic quilt. Maybe that's just the way it should be - that I need to allow some time after finishing a big project for my mind to explore other options and not just dive into another quilt project right away, although I have several on the go.
I have been very inspired by Jude's whatiffing for quite a while, and after seeing this, I went to the trash bag and pulled out some denim strips I had just thrown out, thinking I might do something with them instead. I have lots of bits and pieces left of this fabric, and I just love the colours in it: along with the faded denim blue there are uneven stripes of white, darker blue, teal and purple. I'm thinking of stitching pieces together into some kind of crazy patchwork thing, adding a grid of cut off selvedges on top and doing some kind of embroidery through the layers. Don't ask what it is for - if it's for anything it is just for fun, I suppose :-)

At my guild meeting a few weeks back, there was a demonstration of different ways to use Paintstiks, and I made this rubbing on a piece of batik. It was great fun and very easy to do - you just place the rubbing plate underneath the fabric, rub the stick over and voilá, you have the pattern on fabric. I'm thinking I might just have to get some paintstiks of my own to explore this further.

Hm, I just realized that the paintstiks are actually the same kind we used in the eighties, when adding stenciled motifs to our walls was all the rage, so I might just have an old one in the basement, come to think of it...
While I was trying to find curtain fabric for my living room last year, this was one of the options. Luckily I had the sense not to buy the actual yardage, but I bought a table runner, just to see how the colours would work with what I had (and they didn't!). I came across it the other day, and have been playing with ideas about what to do with it. I like the funky flowers, but somehow, the idea of adding something to them, like embroidery or quilting or some other kind of embellishment is tempting.
And then there is this. Remember that fabric paper I made a while ago? I fooled around with it some more, cut some pieces, and stuck them to a piece of quilted fabric I had discarded from a handbag I made a few years back. It was quilted first, and then I managed to cut it into the wrong size, so I had to make a new piece. I loved the fabric, so I just couldn't bear to throw it away, and now I decided to incorporate it into a new piece of something or other. It needs more stitching and embellishment, but I don't actually know what yet, so I'm just fooling around with it to see what I can come up with.

So that's all I have to show for my long silent period - although to my defense, things have been really frantic at work lately. But with all the preparations done, I managed to make a success of the three-day conference I hosted last week, the hired speakers did what was expected of them, and all the participants from near and far seemed well pleased with the outings I had arranged, so eventually I was able to let my shoulders down and breathe normally again, and actually enjoy myself. And now, after a quiet relaxing Saturday I'm here, ready to play, and what can be better than that?