This quilt represents a new direction I'm taking with my art quilts. Rather than use the handpainted fabric as a background, why not build the quilt around it? I handpainted this fabric with a flower in mind and then I let the painted surface guide my quilting design. I added dense quilting in the center to make it lie flat so that the "petal" sections of the quilt would appear more dimensional by comparison.  In this quilt, I decided to keep the white edges from the stretcher bars and use them as borders to showcase some fancy quilting.

Judy Gula at Artistic Artifacts suggested that I needed some beads to define and augment the center. I enjoyed the beading, especially building the layers.

I offer a workshop in handpainting fabric.