Playing with Paintstiks

Last month at my Colorful Quilts & Textiles class we played with Paintstiks! This is a fun and easy technique. I was the door prize winner and received the Painstiks on Fabric book shown below. This is a great reference book by Shelley Stokes. Below are the results of some of my playing with Paintsticks for the first time! I mostly used my own rubber stamps but also woven straw hotpads (upper left) and purchased rubbing plates. I wanted to use some of my leftover On the Breeze fabrics but found it was too busy to show off the paint stick technique. So I overdyed the fabric in blue. I then did some rubbings in a few different colors using different rubbing plates. Because I knew I wanted to use the Court house block for a pocket, I needed a light and dark version of this fabric. The dark version came from strips of the overdyed fabric and the light strips came from using the back side of the original fabric. I pieced them around a square featuring the paintstik image. Bag pattern is: The Original Scrap-bag™ Item #201 OSBP I used a paintstik image only for the back pocket below. Here's a close up of the overdyed, paintstik pocket. . There are may ways to use these paint sticks, this is just one technique. It easy and fun and not too messy either. Have fun and create something unexpected!