Embellish with Hand Stitching

The final stage of creating Sue's "Falling Leaves" piece was to embellish with hand stitching.  The green background was really begging for some texture, so the first step was filling that in with some "ricing" or "chicken scratch" stitches.

That helped a lot, but also made some of leaves with less paint stand out more - and not in a good way!  So obviously they needed some stitching too.

Here's a close-up of the filled in leaves.

The next addition was using a backstitch to add veins to the applique leaves.

Finally, after adding the binding, which is fused in place, a blanket stitch was added over the edge of the binding. 

The variegated floss adds dimension as well as texture and helps bring the piece to life.