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 traced the lines from my printed photo onto an acrylic sheet then used my projector to trace it onto a large piece of fabric, a kinda black and gray batik.  I made mine like a rainbow, using ROYGBIV as my guideline to the rainbow.  You know, Red, Orange,Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet....

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