A new idea and new energy

Awhile back I mentioned parfait dying Damask napkins and then cutting them in strips, but then not knowing what to do with them.  The other day it came to me that I've always been attracted to leaves. What if--I covered the sewn together strips with a swath of dimensional leaves?  How to make those leaves? Pintrest gave me a couple of ideas, and I've used so many techniques over the years, what if I took a look at some of the older techniques?  One I remembered was quilted leaves cut out and edge stitched with beads.  I knew that I had seen it done by Linda Kemshell, but couldn't remember where, so hit the reference books, without success.  Then found the demo on Quilting arts tv number 201. 

The dyed strips really have a problem with value.  Here they are on my portable flannel wall, ready to be sewn together. Yeah, there's a value issue there, but it will make a good background for leaves of a darker value.

First thing I did was try, for the third time, to dye a couple of napkins with the same colours, but much more intensely coloured.  Not wanting to change too much, I elected to use parfait dying again.

The other thing I decided to try was fabric paper.  I quickly realized that I would probably have to back the leaf with the same thing, as I wanted them to be dimensional.  For that I would need a consistent shape and that meant I would need a template.  Good thing I'm as old as I am, and learned my craft before rotary cutters.  I just happened to have a bit of template plastic on hand.  The price puts it out of my range these days.  The red paint on the scissors designates them as paper scissors. The colour on the fabric paper is much darker than it appears here.  I cut out 12 leaves, which when sewn together, will make 6 leaves.  

When I looked at them, they looked a little "blah-h-h".  This meant that there had to be either paint or fabric added to lift up the "zowie" factor.  More paint would make all the layers difficult to sew through, so I went to my stash of fabric scraps that already had fusible web on one side.

Does anyone else save those scraps?  I have two gallon sized Zip Loc bags stuffed with them, and they have never let me down when I wanted that perfect little piece, for what ever.  I do store them in sealed bags, as I think that extends the life of the fusible web.  Here's the pile after I've gone through it, and then sealed up ready to go back into the storage shelves.

And that was yesterday.  Today I'll deal with the parfait dye bath, and figure out what's going to happen with that.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network, and maybe, Nina-Marie Sayre's  Off the Wall Friday.