Shrinking Fabric

Have you ever used this stuff?? Its marketed in smaller pieces as Texture Magic but you can buy it by the metre as well.

I have used it once before and played with for a few other little things.

Last night I worked on these:

 and a close up 

Any idea what they are for??

The idea is to sew it to the fabric and then steam it - it is so humid here that a few leaves had started to curl even before the iron was anywhere near it.
(For those not in the know - it is very wet on the east coast of Australia - especially the SE corner of Queensland and the northern parts of NSW.  Have a look:

There is also a lot of strong wind heading our way.

The rectangle shows roughly where I live.