Machine quilting with thread waste

After having an obsession with skies, I think I may have conquered it now.  I've painted them with fabric paint, I've machine quilted them and now I've used a technique that has satisfied me.  I read about using thread waste - all those little bits of coloured thread you cut off from your sewing and embroidery - and I machine quilted them on to this sky, which I made by appliqueing "sky" shades onto a foundation, along with a few seagulls cut from the beach/lighthouse fabric.  I had to cover the thread waste with Sulky water-soluble stabiliser first as they kept catching in the darning foot I was using; that worked and when I'd finished machine quilting I just dipped it into water and the Sulky dissolved.  Here are some close-ups to show you how it looks.

I hope it gives you some ideas for yourself.

At http://bird-diary.blogspot.com/ you will find my other blog.

Inkjet printing transfers

Look at this picture from a calendar and you will see at the top of the wombat a mark where the calendar hole was.  This picture is to be printed on an inkjet transfer sheet, a piece of fabric which is made to go through an inkjet printer, because it is for my wombat-mad grandson Pete, to form part of a storage bag for his wombat collection.  Because of the fault in the picture, I scanned the calendar picture in and opened it in the Paint program, after making a copy to save as the original.  Then I had several attempts to brush paint effects over the affected area.  There are sufficient colours available in the Paint program to restore the picture to normal, and when I saved my best effort and then printed on the inket transfer paper I was very pleased - see the next photo for the result.

Try this yourself with a calendar picture.