Printing & Stitching With Leaves

I always come back to hand stitching.

No matter how many paints, book-making, print-making,, mark-making, tool-making, or anything else I experiment with, I always love working with thread and fabric.  It's calming.  Meditative.  Healing.

Here is a finished piece that started out as white cotton, dyed with black beans in the sun (see my July 17th post), gel printed with blue acrylic paint, over printed with real leaves using yellow acrylic paint, hand stitched with French knots and a running stitch with variegated embroidery floss and pearl cotton, and then layered with batting and a backing, free motion stitched on my Bernina and finished with a rattail binding.

Whew!  That was a lot of different techniques all packed into one piece.  But satisfying.  So I'm working on another.