I am back to camping out on Mike's laptop, separated from Photoshop and my library of pictures. I hope it won't be forever.
After letting the autumn leaf cloth sit for a while I took it down to our local thread store and pawed through the various choices in embroidery floss. I always enjoy playing with threads, and this time was no exception. I usually use very fine embroidery ( one or two strands of floss), but this time I was drawn to the heavier perle cottons. I came home with a handfull of lovely colors, but when I began to experiment with them I quickly realized I only needed two. I am going to outline all of the leaves in the wheaty-gold color because it reminds me of the rim of light you see when you stand under a tree and look up through its backlit leaves. Also I think what I didn't like about my painted leaves was the color variation. This will help pull them all back together. The grey-blue, which looks very close to the decorative flourishes on the dishes will shadow the stems and I hope it won't be too much. I tried a number of types of stitches but fell back upon my tried and true stem stitch...the one my mother taught me in second grade. Now I know what to do, but just need to do it. That will take a while.