A Hard Decision... Finally Made

I feel like I've been beating my head against a wall this whole summer.
First, to use leaves or not and then what materials.
I'd been blindly leaning towards the paint soaked cheescloth for months but I fianlly realized there  were two big issues.
The first one was physical.
How to fix the edges so there would be no fraying. I considered a glue line, fully fused to the surface and last a tedious but effective satin stitch around every piece.

The second road block was an artistic decision. Would the complexity of the cheescloth fabric compete with the woven background. In the end I decided it would and yesterday I abandoned the idea.

While I love this material I decided it wasn't for this piece. Reluctantly I've pit it aside.


There was nothing in my stash remotely intense enough for what I envisioned so this morning I got out the paints. I pinned a piece of blank material to a large frame and mixed and blended, red, blue, orange and yellow.

I have two art pieces in my folio that I loved and subsequently didn't offer for sale. Both had the leaf component made from my own painted cloth. They were the deciding factor in my completely turned around decision.

So here are several shots of this new material, approx 1 yd.
It's still wet and the colour is still moving but now I have the luscious red I wanted for the maple leaves.