Art quilt inspiration

I've recently been admiring Art Quilts because I love patchwork, applique, scrapbooking and I'm intrigued by surface design and this encompasses it all! I have discovered Quilting Arts magazine and I love it, I bought a book which combines a lot of the techniques shown in the magazine over the years- I read it this weekend and I can thoroughly recommend it if surface design, textile art and art quilts is your thing!I got into the idea after looking at another great- but out of print- book called Photo Album Quilts by Wendy Butler Berns that I found in turn via a blog hop promoting a book by the same author. I wanted to have a go at something pictoral and not to abstract as these are the quilts I like most and so I made a sketch (late at night on a friday, as you do) which I now need to simplify and blow up huge, and then just get stuck in! I've decided to quilt a large picture of my boys- minus the OH (collectively all living creatures in our house are "my boys").Here's some of my favourite ones I've found on the internet so far, it's amazing what you can do with fabric!This evening I will be getting an old toothbrush and some acrylic paint and splattering some white cotton ready to be used in a paper piecing project so I can get the perfect match for something. Hopefully I will have a finished block to show you tomorrow- after a coule of sessions I still only have two little pieces stitched together because I keep cutting the fabric wrong or stitching things upside down so that they don't fit over the whole piece it's supposed to. Let it be known that I still hate paper piecing but I'm not going to let it beat me, and I think I'm nearly there with understanding it!Don't forget my button giveaway is still on 'til Friday!