Water balloons

On Friday I popped into one of those cheap stores that sell a random assortment of items (chiefly, it would seem at this time of the year, tacky Christmas decorations!) to get some water balloons for James' birthday party. As we were walking out, some large notepads caught my eye; the A3 newsprint I like for printing foundations - so now I have an even cheaper supply! I also found some huge (A2) pads of tracing paper, which I thought might be handy. They are! I used some last night, and it's perfect for laying over a quilt top and working out quilting designs - clear enough to see the quilt top clearly though it, but strong enough to withstand several iterations of drawing and erasing. I used it to design the feathers for my current Tree quilt - here's one section quilted:

(Designed free-hand, traced prior to sandwiching with a clover blue pen (removability pre-tested on identical fabric, given my recent troubles!) and free-motion quilted using a rayon embroidery thread in pale purple and silver BottomLine in the bobbin.)
Incidentally, it took Simon about 2 hours to fill 150 water balloons, and less than 2 minutes for a group of overexcited 5-and-6-year-olds to throw and burst them all!