Ferns: Making Progress

Here is the latest version of my fern piece. As you can well guess, I didn't finish it in time to give away at Christmas. However, I did fall in love with this little piece somewhere along the way.
Since the last photo posted, I repainted the background with more Setacolor. I am much happier with the color now. I darkened all of the areas between the ferns with a russet and a teal paint and then added more gray and turquoise to the sky to get rid of the distracting white.
 I then dug through my stash and found this raisin colored silk that came from an old kimono. It was too bright, so I wadded it up and splashed some dark brown and black paint on it and set it in a window to dry. I am much happier with it now.

And the dragonfly is a female Halloween Pennant ( Celithemis eponina) that I made using metallic silk organza for the wings and dupioni for the body. I added the detail to the body with Tsukineko inks and my Identipens and then hand appliqued the body on.
The "streamer' like pieces are simply bits and pieces of different silk stitched onto solvy which was then dissolved. I call them kite tails.
 I am anxious to get back to work on this piece, but now I am too busy with work, so it will have to wait for a while.
When I occassionally find the time to create my own work I am reminded of how much I love doing this and why I started in the first place.
 In case you wondered, I picked another piece from my inventory to give to my friend so that I didn't feel too guilty about keeping this one for myself.