Drawing On What's At Hand

Let's face it: very few of us have the drawing abilities of Grandma Coco, who manages to turn everything she touches into a work of art. Most of us draw on other skills - not to mention what's at hand - to help our shapes look recognizable. Over the years I've built up a mental inventory of circular shapes of all sizes in our household. This large lid for a plastic container was not quite big enough for my purpose, so I bent the flexible ruler around it to add another 1/4" or so. Perfect.
A Paderno pot lid defined the inner edges of my circle.

Then it was down to this wide-mouth Corelle teacup to make scallops on the large circle. Note I have used masking tape on the cup to mark the placement on the line.

After all these maneuvers, I was left with this outline on tissue paper. Does it look like anything to you yet? :)

To make my pattern symmetrical, I folded the tissue in half to mark the centre and darkened the lines on one half with a black Sharpie.

I folded freezer paper in half and lined up the creases on the two papers. Then I traced the line.

Folding my freezer paper in half, I cut along the black line, then folded it in quarters to trim my scallops to a uniform shape. I was left with this "tree" shaped background, upon which I will applique leaves and a trunk.

The freezer paper will get ironed to the back side of the fabric and cut with an added seam allowance for turned-edge applique.