slow stitching/ hand stitching/ Bead fun

I am finishing up the painted fall piece.
 I showed you the painting of it, and showed you the 3-D leaves, and this is a pic of the leaves sewn down, the top is pretty heavily quilted for a small 22" X 27" quilt.
I am putting on a striped binding slightly larger than usual, finishing at 3/4". 

The leaves are standing up nicely and I quite like the rough threadwork on the edges and the veining.
The binding will brighten up the whole caboodle.
Of course I woke up thinking about embellishments though. I am not even done with binding although I did add in the sleeve already. I should wait to do beading and special trims til the binding is done, however....

Can you see the bugle breads, yellow sequins, and gold metallic star sequins?? I played for an hour while having coffee this morning. Pulled out the bead trays, auditioned many possibilities. A few are being called back for a second trial but by tomorrow I should have sewn down the binding by hand, then be well into the hand beading.

The whole thing was never meant to go this far. I painted it on a whim, and thought it wasn't worthy of finishing til my friend Annie said it was. I looked again and thought, maybe it is.

Then I fussed with borders til I got the idea to make scrappy 9-patches and loved them. Some leaves are painted, some raw-edge appliqued, and some are free standing finished on both sides and curling up like real leaves.It's almost all done but the hand work and I wrote a short story to go with it.
Should be ready to post by Monday.
Thanks for looking!!