thank you so much, Rob. I agree that the Inktense pencils would probably make a mess of the bat. since I'll have to purchase paints, I think I'll go with the fabric paint. another thought is to use the Inktense on the back of the background fabric--that's assuming I can draw in reverse what I have in mind! This is strictly an experiment--I used strings to do some applique for a guild program on string quilts and figured since all experimental I wanted to try my hand at doing some dying/painting/etc on the bat to see how that works.