Pieces of History - Family Trees

 This rusted cloth was the first I ever, made with a cheap piece of cotton from Jo-Anns, it even had a hole in it , but I just wanted to try some rust-dying, so I used what I had on hand at the time.Well I have been trying to recreate this type of patterning on "good" fabric ever since, I have gotten some other cool prints but nothing similar. Lesson here don't use Junk when trying a new technique, because it might be the one you like the best.

I see a tree in this, a big old knarlly river willow, leanin' over the banks of the Big Elk River.

I have been hanging on to this for a couple of years trying to decide how to implement my vision, I played with some computer doodling when I first took these pictures; to get a better vision of my tree, and to see which side of the cloth I want to use. You always get design on both sides with rust-dyeing.

So every leaf will have a photo transfer from one of my family photos. I have had fun trying different transfers for all the leafs. I am thinking either hand stiching the tree outline with some heavy hand-dyed threads I bought a while back from Artfabrik , or machine "thread-sketching I have a few different sizes, some I can run throught my machine and some I can not. I think the heavier the thread the better it will help to define the tree, but I have never really handstiched anything.

I had the idea that I needed to mark or outline my cloth to get have a better visual, I have no non-perment marking tools at the moment, so what to do... Light bulb moment! freezer paper, iron on and hang on the window and draw all you want .   I had a new idea should I cut out the tree and applique onto a different background fabric, or would I lose the effect of the whole cloth printing? More desicions...

Piles of leaves....how to make the leaves later.