How to preserve leaves

Speaking to Tonniece about the beautiful colours of the Autumn (Fall) leaves reminded me that when I was doing my City & Guilds Part 2 course my Research work was based on Trees. I took photographs of every tree imaginable, the trunks, the lichen that grows on them you name it I photographed it. However one other thing I did was when I was on my travels around the world I kept leaves from the places I visited. In order to preserve them I "painted" each side of the leaf with PVA glue. No special glue is required any cheap and cheerful PVA glue will do - as long as it dries clear.

The quilt you see above includes some of those leaves. I made this quilt back in 2001 and the leaves are as lovely now as they were then! The background fabric is a piece of my early attempts at fabric dyeing, actually my very first attempts come to think of it.

This was made as part of my recycling project. The fabric was old white hospital sheets I hand dyed. The leaves as I said are real leaves painted with PVA glue and left to dry. I laid the leaves on each panel and on top I added some old overhead transparencies.

Because I was limited to the size of the transparencies I just joined them together with a zigzag stitch.
It's difficult to photograph the quilt because of the glare from the transparencies. However you can see the rich colour of this leaf that came all the way from Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA (my most favourite place I have visited).

Although it was easy enough, with care, to stitch through the transparencies by machine I decided to use another stitch we learned at college - Big stitch attributed to Joe Walters.

Here is what the stitch looks like on the back of the quilt (it's the same on the front but I can show it more clearly on the back). I used a perle cotton thread.