This time I found a monoprint of the field, which I had coloured, in one of my sketchbooks and decided to use that as the background.
This was, of course, much less hassle than free machining a background, but also interesting as I wanted to try a different method/effect. I liked the quite dramatic red line down the centre and after all the green and brown decided to go for red with a touch of iridescent tinting medium; the effect was rather more pink shiney than red and I pondered over whether or not to darken this area, in the end I have left it.
I added the whole to white felt and needlefelted the three layers around the edge. This time I also machined around the inner edge of the picture as I liked the effect of the white felt being more dimensional. These pieces are difficult to photograph, if you click on the top picture it gives a better idea of the dimensional quality (I have just realised that if you click twice the image comes up really large).