Tropical Garden Layout

Today I finally got some actual work done on the tropical garden piece for which I had composed and sewn the first layer of work in my Tennessee studio.

The leaves, flowers, and tiki are just laid in place. I consider this to be an initial layout. There will more plants in the foreground and upper corners as well as those you see getting more refined. I see at least two more layers of work before it's finished. Here's an example of the layers for one of the panels of "Prairie Performance"...

All the leaves and flowers are laid over the background (first photo) in the center picture. In the third one, most of them are placed under a layer of tulle netting to hold them in place while some of them are stitched on top of the tulle to give depth and dimension to the piece.

It feels good to actually have gotten some actual elements on that background after the hours spent doing the prep work of gathering foliage and flower petals as well as researching information about particular plants.