Apples

I'm a bit obsessed with apples lately since I bought a Nestabilities apple die set.  I used them in this month's calendar page here and I zentangled one while listening to The Count of Monte Cristo on the radio:

 I scanned the picture and it's come out quite large but in fact is only about 5 inches square.
Then I used the smallest apple in the set to cut a stencil from acetate and stencilled some black fabric with Stewart Gill True Colour paint which covers dark fabric really well.  When dry I overstamped polka dots with chestnut metallic paint. This is the finished piece:

I had some paint left over on my palette so found a scrap of calico and stencilled a few more apples to use up the paint.  Then I decided to use the scrap piece to try out stitching etc. to see what worked.  I also used the nestabilities to actually cut out a couple of apples from the fabric and the Cuttlebug handled that very well.  I liked my efforts on the scrap piece so ended up finishing it off as a very mini quilt, about postcard size:

 If I'd planned the piece I probably wouldn't have done 2 red apples on the top row, 2 green on the bottom, but that was just the way I did it and I like the overall finished piece.  The apples have stem stitch round them and the border has French knots. Now I've just got to get round to doing something similar with the main black piece.