The real thing

Have you ever wondered if you can sew things other than fabric..........you know weird things? Last fall, at guild we were issued a challenge that will be the topic of my next post. Part of this challenge was to have a maple leaf somewhere on the quilt top.
In deciding what to do I began to wonder if I could sew with leaves so I gathered a few and preserved them in 2 ways. The first was the way we did in grade school........pressing them between sheets of wax paper, the second involved a water and glycerin mixture. Here is what I found, the wax paper process left the leaves somewhat brittle but did retain their colour quite nicely. With the other method, all of the colour changes to a dark reddish brown but left the leaves quite supple.
So the first photo is the wax paper pressed leaves layered under tulle and stitched. The bits you see "missing" are a result of me scratching at them with my fingernail to see how well they would stand up to abuse.
The second photo is a leaf preserved with the glycerin stitched in the same manner.
The last photo shows an actual leaf that has been thread painted. Yes that really is a leaf under all that thread. The beauty of this method is that you will have very naturally shaped leaves in all sizes.
I'll go into some detail about these with my next post when I will also be able to reveal my challenge piece.