Quilting on Leather

I have been admiring Cathy Wiggins quilting on leather. I have a DVD ..... a calf skin from the Uncle Johnny stash

....and leather needles (finally, the correct ones).  And a pic from a Dover book to try....

I cut my calf skin into several pieces so i could practice. My first needle purchase wasn't the correct needles....they fit the domestic machine. So, i did a bit on the Baby Lock machine....didn't like that.  So, i put it on the longarm and just used the regular needle.  It worked...kinda....but the thread broke several times. and my choice of color thread didn't have enough contrast to see it well.

So, now i have the proper needles and decided to put it back on the machine and go over it in black .... and some colors.

Here is what i have so far. It's kind of rough because i am just stitching over what i did the first time. i went over it several times.

A close up of the horse

I used gold for the flowers and they still don't show much.

And tried some white and gray for the mountains and sky....not too thrilled with that either.

The horse stands out....i put extra batting under him.

But i have tried and i see that it can work......so, the next piece will be better.

I am thinking i need to go back and do some background fill....like Cathy does.  what do you think?  And it needs some sort of 'border'.  I shall keep this piece to remember what my first leather piece looked like.