This years Weekly Leaf finished

I've finished all the stitching on this years weekly leaf, but of course I'm not finished, they all have to be stitched to the background. This is the finished group on the design wall. You can see each individual one here.http://notesfromstudiob.blogspot.com/p/the-weekly-leaf-year-2.html

Week #52 was done with a leaf that I had saved because it looked like an alien. Unfortunately it was very brittle so the print was faint and the alien 'eyes' didn't show up.

All of the leaves have now been pinned to the quilted background. I worked on my large print table to get them all even.

Then hung it on the wall and of course each one shifted a bit but I can straighten them as I hand sew them down. I'm not looking forward to the sewing them down part.

This year I used the following surface design techniques;paintstiks, blueprints on gold fabric, leaves photocopied onto fabric, close up photos printed on fabric, stencils, gelli prints, deconstructed screen print, soy wax with dye, soy wax with discharge, flour paste, SolarFast prints, stitched resist, color magnet, hand carved stamps, painted fusible and the leaf as the printmaking tool.

I've gathered materials for next year, I'll still be doing leaves but with a few changes. First will be color. I had a reader suggest a book that she thought I would like, Fall photos by Christopher Griffith.

Thanks Robbie. You can get the book from other booksellers on Amazon, very inexpensively. The photos in this book are of northeastern trees. The colors are magnificent. I grew up with those colors and it's the only thing I miss about the area. So here are my colors.

The reds are really not pinkish and my camera insists they are.

Second change will be using some materials that I haven't used before (at least not in my leaves).

Tea bag papers, book pages, krafttex, lutrador and some other things I have around. Some weeks will be my usual print, others will be with some of the above stuff included.

Third change will be using felt as my background and stitching the pieces together as I go. I haven't gotten the felt yet, but I do have a trip planned to Boise tomorrow to get some. I'm sure hoping that it works so I can avoid the end of the year stitching them all in place.

Daily Stitching updates

Silk Fragments #356-#362, three more to go!

Sari Ribbon #284-#290

Linked to"Off the Wall Friday".