Leaves, Stems and Flag

I'm getting close to stitching all the parts of the bouquet down, but before I do that I need to stitch some stems on for the flower buds and flag stick. The stems and flag stick are strips of yarn couched to the background. For me couching is just using a zig-zag machine stitch over the strip of yarn. Here is the yarn I used.

The leaves for this piece are made by stitching batik fabric leaf shapes to a wool background. The wool background was then cut about 1/8" from the batik fabric. In some instances I did a wavy shape cut in the wool to make it a little more interesting. 

One of the leaves was given a bent shape in the middle before stitching it to the background.











The flag was made by appliqueing star fabric to a red and white striped fabric and then stitching it to the flag pole. I hand stitched the flowers and flag to the quilted background. The leaves were machine stitched down.