Saturday, September 10, 2011

Leaf WIPs

Today was one of those days, so I will just show you some pages I am working on from a fabric journal on the theme "leaves".
These pages are about four inches square and I am trying to depict leaves in a different way with a different technique on each page.
This first one has had the background changed several times and I still don't like it.  I love the yarn wrapped leaves, but can't seem to find the right background.  I had thought of having the stripes echoed in the background and using more of a red and brown....
This one is in it's infancy and is really about the tree I can see in the dye spots.  The yellow leaf outline is for a needlelace leaf, however, I have now decided to do three of them down the right hand side.  We will see how it goes.
This one is much closer to being finished, it just needs quilting/embellishment in the background.  The ferns were drawn with free motion and filled using colour spotting, which gives them darker speckles, especially at the ends of the fronds where I changed direction.

This last one is basically finished except that I want to change the colour of the satin stitching around the reverse applique, and in any case it needs to be wider, since the black satin came loose in places as I quilted by hand. 
I think that this project is helping me practice looking critically at my work.  Because each piece is small, the changes I might make are small.  It is not intended to be a work of art, more a work of reference for me to refer to and is an easy way to try out all the techniques I am interested in without taking risks on a big piece.

I think I will leaf it at that!