Slow Crochet - garlands made with crochet thread and felted wool die cuts

I have been brainstorming to find a process by which I could create garlands using thread and fabric shapes.  After a bit of research on garlands I found most had twine or ribbon as their base and a wide variety of fabric components including some made from felted wool die cuts, blanket stitched fabric shapes and "heat n bond" fabric elements.  I have a stash of felted wool donated to me by my daughter and I thought it would be a good place to start.  I wanted to find a way to secure the shaped elements to the substructure that would involve some slow activity so I decided to explore crocheting.  I liked the fact that I could use fairly thin crochet thread to create a more robust substructure than it would be on its own and that the finer thread would work to secure the elements in a sort of sewing way.  It took me a while to find what I was looking for online.  The technique I discovered is called surface crocheting and though I did not find any examples of it being used with fabric I thought I would give it a try.  I found some precut diecuts in the stash of felted wool and thought they would do for my experiments.  I started yesterday and found that the technique worked quite well for securing the butterflies to the substructure I created.  Interestingly, physics being what it is it, where you choose to run the surface crochet affects how the element hangs on the substructure.  I had thought that it would be great to have the substructure run right through the middle of the butterflies horizontally.  It was disappointing to see all the butterflies flip over when I hung my garland because they are heavier at the top than the bottom.  A bit more research and I decided to try to secure the butterflies at the top of their wings instead.  That worked better but they really looked more like they were caught in a net with the substructure between the wing tips which was not really the look I was going for.  So today with a bit of time on my hands after having done the mending (how did that happen??????????) I decided to see if I could go through the middles vertically and have the butterflies just be following each other on the garland.  That worked quite well and as I was playing with them to take photos I tried hanging them vertically instead of horizontally and liked that quite a bit too. I think the vertical ones would work really well in the wind - either hung outside or on a screen in a window.  I did have a butterfly vertical garland that I receive as part of a birthday card a while back.  It hung on the screen in the patio door and was always being activated by the wind.  It had a little weight at the bottom so maybe these would need weights at the bottom as well when hung vertically.  

We shall see as it is a work in progress and I am very happy to have a process that works to create garlands with fabric as a slow activity.   You can see below how the surface crochet appears on the elements.  It looks like regular stitching on one side and chain stitches on the other side.  It was so nice to be able to find a way ahead for this project.  Appreciate all those who share on the internet so the rest of us can find them.  

Therese