I showed you this idea for a fabric/felt collage with my last post. I decided to change out the background fabric as it was too close in color and value to the piece of silk that I was planning on stitching an aspen branch.

I free motion machine stitched on the silk to create the look of my sketch of the aspen leaves. I backed the silk with a piece of commercial felt and cut it so it couldn’t be seen but still gives stiffness to the silk. I don’t mark the design when I stitch, just do it by eye. Once it was completed, I felt like the branch was too dark in comparison to the leaves and I liked the look of the dark leaves in my sketch.

So I colored in the leaves with a permanent marker in dark brown. That definitely was an improvement and gave quite a contrast with the lighter silk. The silk was dyed with natural dyes and was a failed attempt with eco printing. I am trying to use up all those scraps and class samples with these collages.

I chose one of my recently snow dyed cotton fabric pieces and hand stitched the printed aspen leaf on to the snow dyed background. Before I did that, I did outline the leaf with FME (free motion machine embroidery). I wanted to have some of the brown from the silk in other areas of the design.

The last detail was to outline some of the snow dyed “leaves” in the background. I didn’t really choose this piece of fabric because it had leaves but once I had attached everything, I noticed that the leaves were there, looking like aspen leaves. I just outlined them in a “sketchy” manner with a green fine tipped marker. I could have hand stitched them but I didn’t want them to be too prominent. You can’t see them from a distance but they do show up when you view the piece at a closer distance.

I haven’t decided how to display or frame this yet. I am going to make a few and then see if they work together somehow or if they are a series that will be treated similarly.