Tyvek Leaves

This was one of the page I made for my Tree Book and will end up being the second page of the book. The base fabric is a cheap brown poly/cotton piece of sheeting which was painted using acrylic paint sponged on with baby wipes (a technique I love since I then get to use the coloured and dried baby wipes as a fabric, too) first in an Indian Red that was simply sponged on, then in copper and gold which was sponged through some punchinella to create an interesting background. I then couched on a few metallic threads to tie the whole background piece together.

The leaves are made of Tyvek which I first coloured with dye ink, stamped with Staz-On, heated (with an iron on wool and using a piece of parchment to protect the iron) from the reverse to shrink and add texture and finally coloured with a bit more dye ink to enhance the textural qualities. I used free motion embroidery to stitch the leaves down following the leaf veins of the stamped image as a rough guide. I really like how the FME turned out and plan to experiment further with stitching Tyvek in the future.