The attached file was made using a filter to increase the contrast and decrease the lightness of the bitmap before tracing. Then the resulting path was duplicated, flipped horizontally and unioned, overlapping nodes were aligned etc. etc.... THANKS for that which helped me quickly achieve my goal, ...

OK, the problem was as mentioned above that my tool preferences were not set to "last used style", so that's that sorted. Thanks again for all the kind help, I'm embarrassed my beginner's stupidity has bothered several different very helpful users

Thanks guys, very, very helpful replies - that ought to be enough for me to work it out. Thanks again.

Aha, so no drawing on top of an embedded png, thanks for clearing that out. If you were to draw a white outline of the shield, how would you go about it? (sorry I'm so demanding with my questions) :D Edit: I can still add calligraphy strokes to the shield without a problem, though, it's just bezier ...

OK, thanks guys, but I'm still at a loss as to what's locking the stroke colour set. And I'm also a complete noob, no pro

the .svg: http://www.mediafire.com/?lg1ns8pm1sc2djp (mediafie link to uploaded svg)

This should be easiest thing in the world and I can change calligraphy stroke and fill colours easily, but the bezier and freehand stroke colours won't change, shift+click has no effect. Screenshot if there's a clue in that: http://imgur.com/LuucA Does anyone what's wrong? You'll save a fellow human...