Artery

Ok, what do a cholla skeleton and face cleaning pads have in common?

 AND, how did they end up in a quilt called Artery?

so, I paint a

 piece of fabric and start laying out the painted face pads on it.

Which is where the cholla skeleton comes in, it has the kind of repetitive organic pattern that I love.

I was annoyed with the kids for leaving wet gloppy cleaning pads in the shower until I looked at them closely- ooh, they have little scrubby dots on them!  that pop out when they are painted, even better...

after all the little green scrubbies were attached with their purple felt centers, I quilted them to their background using a piece of felt for the backing.

 after the quilting, I cut the whole thing out and turned the edges under.

 here it is laid out onto a piece of polyester that will be used for the experimental background.

 I trace around the edges so I know where to paint.

 here's the painting using my fav dye-na-flow

so then I take the painted poly and layer it on top of red cotton batik

 and then quilt the whole thing.

and now for the fun part- I melted part of the poly away with the heat gun to reveal the red batik underneath....use cotton thread for the quilting!

so now I can sew the central branch shape to the background.  hooray for invisible thread!

voila!