Hey, I'm still here, just ready to blog about a new art quilt I just finished. It's called Spiral Vortex.
I was inspired by Carol Morrissey who shared her dot technique on The Quilt Show. I used a Go Cutter mini to cut a bunch of colored dots from pre-fused fabric. Carol uses Heat N Bond lite, I decided to use a new fusible called Flexi-fuse because I find it easier to stitch through. But in hindsight, I would probably use the Heat n Bond lite next time. The flexi fused pieces are coming up on the edges of the circles after quilting and washing, yikes.
So, I get ahead of myself... I was dying to try this technique, but couldn't find the right photograph, Carol uses flowers, cats, and even her grandson. I had this picture in my phone of this painted wall on a building in Kerrville, TX that I always thought would make a cool quilt. So why not?
I tried to use all batiks since they hold up to raw edge applique better. But I had to use some regular quilting fabrics to get the right colors and values.
After finishing, I decided it needed some borders... after lots of experimentation, I made more dots so I could make a design with them in the border. Glad I did, it finished it off nicely.
I quilted the dot portions of the quilt on my longarm with invisible thread - oh the headaches that stuff gives me. But then I didn't have to change threads for each color. I quilted a matrix style design in the dots. Then after some thought, I came back in with my sitdown Juki to pebble the black lines between the dots. 
And then I used my embroidered binding technique to finish off the edges. I show how I do this here:
Here is a close-up of the quilt... and then I am going to end this post. I hope you found something inspirational here today. See you in the funny papers, Karen
