Irene MacWilliam - Nettles Support 40 Species- theme- Weeds

I thought I had this piece finished a few weeks ago but I was not very happy with it. Every day I looked at it and I knew that the nettle looked rather uninteresting and wrong. Here is a detail of it. I had bound the edges and got the sleeve on it.

I realised I needed to add more interest to the nettles so I free machine stitched to try to remove the flat look. I was not worrying about being realistic as if there were a light source. As the stitching was added after the piece was finished it looks strange just having this stitching showing on the back but I do not care, it would not satisfy any quilt judge. 

and here is the complete piece. It is 24 x 12 inches or 60 x 30 cms. I am a lot happier with it. It is unusual for me to be working with pale fabrics. All the fabrics in this piece have been dyed or overdyed and then painted, printed by various means with home made stamps and sun printed except for the leaves of the nettles, they are polycottons in 2 shades. the home produced fabrics were then cut and reassembled and cut and reassembled. The lower part is quilted with buttercup leaf shapes to keep to the theme of Weeds.