"Come With Me to the Kasbah"

My journey with this quilt began with a collection of seven blocks featuring spirals that were made for me by Thursday Bee members of the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild. The resulting combination of them with my block and fabrics reminds me of being in a North African kasbah at night ... the exotic confusion of lights, the wares displayed in the souks and the many twists and turns of the alleyways. The spiral is one of the oldest symbols and much used in North Africa.

48"x 63"

Here's the back where a great deal of hand-stitching of the strips of fabric over every seam plus four vertical ones supporting the length was done. The colored blocks are the bee exchange ones.
And here's a detail shot of the edge finishing on the front of the quilt.
... and on the back. It's the usual double fold binding technique. I allowed for a 1/2" width on the front and a 2" width on the back for added support to ensure that the edges wouldn't curl either to the front or back when it hangs.
I appreciate all of you who have followed the process of my designing this quilt and a big "thank you" to all who left comments. It is one of the most complex quilts I've ever done because it started with that diverse collection of blocks rather than what I would've chosen from scratch. Here are the links for the steps taken to get it completed.

• "My Blocks In the Bee Exchange"
• "Spirals on the Wall"
• "Designing A Compositon"
• "Design Wall Work"
• "Refining and Expanding"
• "Progressing"
• "Just Sewing and Considering"
• "Repeating Lines"
• "By George, I'm Getting There"
• "Seams For Prequilted Blocks"
• "Division of Space"
• "Can't Believe What I Did"
• "Finding Balance"
• "Make It Work"
• "Emphasis In A Composition"
• "Reading A Quilt"
• "Seams Details and Embellishments"

Books about designing that are in my reference library are:

• Design Basics (2nd editon) by David A. Lauer - ISBN 0-03-063911-5
• Design For You (2nd edition) by Beitler & Lockhart - SBN 471-06337-1
• Art and Visual Perception - A Psychology of the Creative Eye (new version) by Rudolph Arnheim - ISBN 0-520-02613-6

I just delivered this quilt to it's first show, "2008 Festival of Quilts", the 10th biennial show in the Farragut Folklife Museum. The show runs fron March 27 th thru the 30th.