A New Use For...Paintstix Rubbing Plates

We'll get to the rubbing plates in a minute.  But first - ta dah!  I sewed the first of the three Starry Night slice quilts together this afternoon.  Isn't it fabulous?  These quilters really came through!  

Most of these women told me over and over that they are certainly not "ART QUILTERS,"  as if art quilters are some foreign breed, people who have specialized training and natural abilities that they themselves weren't blessed with.  I was also told MULTIPLE times that they spent hours and hours agonizing over how to approach their slice, but once they dug in, it really didn't take very long.  Isn't that true about so many things?  Usually I find it best to skip over the agonizing part, just dive in, and do it!

I still have to sew on binding and a sleeve, and then on the the next Starry Night.
Okay, now for the rubbing plates.  As I trimmed each slice for these quilts, I put all the scraps in a pile.  Remember, these slices were turned in to me already layered with batting and backing, and the quilting had been done.  So these scraps were pre-quilted for me.

You know me, I'm not going to throw away good scraps.  So I began butting them side by side, and I zigzagged them together.  I kept adding strips all around until I was out of scraps.  It's a cool thing.  But it needed something more.  I noticed that one of the Slicers had used a rubbing plate and Paintstix to embellish her piece.  I wanted to do the same to my scrap piece, but the rubbing plate wouldn't work through all those layers (I tried).

Then the light bulb went off!  I dabbed white paint directly to the rubbing plate and used it as a stamp.  Voila!  I got the texture I was hoping for.  Here's Starry Night Revisited.