Leaves, Technology mixed with Dance

Making the leaves for the poppies turned into really pushing my brain to figure out how to make them look "natural," but without too much work - especially since there is still a foreground coming.

When I last showed them to you, I had begun sewing them down. In the process of doing that I realized they had to go down one at a time, sometimes over a stem, sometimes, under a stem.  Sometimes they had to be sewn completely down before even another leaf could go on.

In order to keep them from looking flat, everything had to go down in a certain order.

Here's a photo of where I had left off when I last showed you the leaves.

When I got off work on Friday, I was foot loose and fancy free as my Aunt Geri would call it.  (I have always loved this saying as one of my great southern favorites.)

The kids had gone to my parents, Jason was still at work and I had almost 3 hours to myself.  OH! YEAH!!!  

I often take time when I am home by myself to dance and I did on Friday for almost an hour.  I find that when I dance it opens up the creative juices even more and I can work in HYPER speed when I get back to an art project.  Problems I may have been encountering suddenly resolve themselves very easily.  

Dance inspires me in so many ways...

I knew I had quite a bit of work to do on those leaves. 

I needed a way to do them without having to spend time in between each leaf to figure out where the next would go.  

I needed to figure out how I wanted it to look completed without having to stop each time and rework the leaves.

You can see here, I pinned them down how I wanted them to look finished. 

I was doing this between every. single. leaf.  I would sew the next one down and re-pin the leaves to figure out where the next would go.

How dancing inspired me this time:

When I sat down after rinsing off the sweat from dancing I realized I could make a picture of how I wanted it to look finished, then print it out and use that as a template.  

AHHHH.... the simplicity of technology - sometimes.

So, I set to work IMMEDIATELY... 

I made three photos.  One of the whole quilt, one of all the leaves and stems, and lastly, a photo of the section I would be working on close up.  I made the last one close enough that I could see the patterns of the fabric very clearly.

I took the SIM card out of my camera plugged it into the computer and viola - there they were.

I clicked PRINT. 

Now, what size?

I went with 8X10" rather than smaller then I could pin them to my design wall and see them easily while I was working.  

Easy Peasy.

I then took the one which focused on the leaves the closest and numbered them in the order I wanted to sew them down.

After I knew how they were going to go down, I took the leaves off in the order I would be sewing them down and made a small pile by my sewing machine.

I pinned the other two(also numbered) directly over my ironing board on my design wall so I could make sure I was ironing them down where I wanted them finished.

I set back to work sewing down one leaf at a time. 

Because I didn't have to figure out where the next leaf would go in between ironing them down and sewing I was able to get them finished before Jason and I went out for dinner and music.

 

They are not exactly the same.  I found myself wanting to change them a little, but at least I had a general game plan and they managed to go down and look natural in a fraction of the time!  

I will be filing that step in my folder of things to definitely remember to use in the future and I will be working on remembering sometimes the simplest things to do are right in front of us.   I don't need to make things harder than they need to be.  Sometimes, they are quite simple.

See you tomorrow! I'm on to the next step!