Aspen trees in Minnesota

When I was in Minnesota I saw lots and lots of aspen trees. Took a number of pictures of them because I knew I wanted to do something with them. For me they asked for a quilt with a limited color palette: only black and white. I did a gradation with a black dye and made the background free style cutting a number of pieces. With undyed white fabric I cut out the shapes of the trees and fused the trees down. I used raw edge applique to stitch all the pieces. The black marks on the tree trunks were down with oil pastels - I could not find my black paintstik. With variegated black/white thread I stitched some extra lines on the tree trunks. After that the easy part was finished.
Aspen trees have many tiny leaves. One way of applying them would have been to cut out snippets of fabrics and attach these to the quilt. If I had choosen for that route I would have been working for many months on this quilt. Besides I did not want to take what you can call the 'traditional' route. That is the reason I opted for cheesecloth. I dyed - and painted - it till it was black. Draped it over the trees and pinned it down. This picture shows a detail
Now when the quilt is finished and hanging on my wall, I am not completely certain that it should remain like this. I like it a lot, but maybe I can improve it a bit more by adding tiny spots of white and grey paint on top of the cheesecloth.
I do not want to risk my quilt and start on it directly so I will be making a testpiece and see how it looks there.
Size of the quilt is 31"x39"(78 x 98 cm).