Dry Bones!

You guys saw on Wednesday Seymour's body on the back side of his quilt and since then I've been working on his front.  I traced all the bones onto my ivory fabric, stained them with dilute brown india ink, fused them to thick double sided fusible interfacing, and cut them out in large chunks (like foot, or torso).

Since the two quilts may be displayed side by side not just back to back I wanted to make sure that the location of the whole body lined up with the whole skeleton.  I started by hanging the two quilts back to back with the bone side facing out.  Obviously where the body sticks off the side it's easy to see where the bones should go (e.g. for the neck and tail curve).  However, to line up the middle section I pinned through from the back along the edge of the body, legs, tail, and head so I could make sure all the bones fit within those parameters.  Then I pinned up each bone section so make sure everything was fitting correctly.

Next, I cut out each individual bone, pinned it in its proper place, and finally fused them all down.  I'm currently working on sewing them down which is going about as well as you'd expect (read, not well).  I really love the look of the skeleton though with all those bones!!

After finishing the bones, the final step is to work on the foreground of the quilts.  I think the bone side needs some foreground elements so Seymour's skeleton doesn't appear to be floating.  I'm going to do some sage brush and barrel cactus.  However, I'm of two minds about the back side.  I was originally going to put some fun ferns in the foreground, but now I'm not sure where they'd go where they wouldn't be blocking the lake or tree roots  (here's a picture so you'll remember).  What I really don't want is for Seymour to appear to be floating or just stuck on the front.  So what do you guys think?

Important question:  do I need foreground elements on the back (dark body side) and if so where do you think they should be?