Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 Socksillies return to the Simmons" household! A couple of weeks ago, my daughter-in-law asked me to make a socksillie, one of my silly sock toys for her to give as a baby gift. I hadn't made any for awhile and I had forgotten how much fun they are to create. I made this one pictured as I watched a detective show on TV last night, so what an easy relaxed process it is. Socksillies are made by stuffing a sock, and creating a character with embroidered facial features or by adding accessories. This one is for a baby, so it has no bits which could find their way into mouths, noses or other orifices. Its two ears or long haripieces are made by cutting the centre of the top part of a sock, and sewing up the middle and curving the ends. By the way, the baby who will be the recipient of this socksillie is a girl, if that wasn't obvious. This socksillie is named Hettie, making her the eighth in the series - I can keep track of the number because I am going through the alphabet

I have been trying hard to have my samples ready for next year's workshops and was really happy that this week, I finally finished one of my "Compass" series felted art dolls. This one , I think is going to be called "Western Landscape" or maybe "Way Out West". I have planned to make three others ... East Wind, Northern Lights and South Seas - they are still in my head.  These "dolls" are made from one piece of  felt made using the wet felting process with a plastic resist. With this particular one, I used wool and a silk hankie, and then embellished with gemstone chips, beads and some simple surface embroidery . And here is a little needle felted bear I made at "Hello Dollies" yesterday. Cute?  Please also have a look at the photos of the great day we had with Marilyn Halcomb, who gave us a mini workshop on needle felting figures  - Hello Dollies blog

Is too early to think about Christmas ? Not for the Gumnutters Doll group! Last Saturday, our project was to make a "scrappy angel" . Obviously so called, because they are made with scraps of fabric. I made mine 50% of the original pattern size, so they could be little Christmas tree decorations.  I am usually still making Christmas things on Christmas Eve, so it seems rather amazing to me that I have at least two decorations made this early. Thanks to the Gumnutters for motivating me. This week, I was really surprised and delighted to see my Artist Trading Card (ATC)  Doll featured on the homepage of the ATC Doll Group site. I made two ATC dolls as part of a monthly swap which had a theme of Coffee/Tea. ATC dolls are made on a card base, the size of an artist trading card/playing card. Other attachments can be added, but must fold down to the card size.  For my tea ATC doll, I used the tea bag packet from my favourite tea, Lady Grey and created a vintage Lady Grey, complete

 DUST is the ETSY "Down Under Street Team" - a group of Australian Artists, Craftspeople and Artisans who support ETSY and wish to promote independent handcrafted goods here is Australia and workwide. I am a proud member of DUST . Each month DUST has a sale with a theme. This month, the theme is "Something Blue".  I had very few things in my shop which are "blue", so started to get out all the blue stuff I have.This Blue Beadie is one of the little pieces I created once I saw how many blue beads I actually had in my stash. I could probably make hundreds of blue beaded things with what I have collected over the years .  Do I have Bower Bird syndrome? I also made another little blue Angel of Hope. This one is number 21, but will be sent as a gift to a friend Do you believe in Pay It Forward ... doing a good deed with nothing asked in return except that the hope that the recipient would go and do another good deed for someone else to keep the cycle going. Th