Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

This last weekend was the annual exhibition of one of my dollmakers' groups, Hello Dollies. While I was "minding" the exhibition, I finished the doll pictured above. She is another version of my WOW (Woman of Wisdom) pattern. The body of the doll is embellished crazy patchwork and her costume includes hand dyed laces,brocade and silk. This doll has been named AGB because the type of embellishment is very much in the Anne's Glory Box embellishment class style. AGB is a stump doll  - a cloth doll with a "stump" as a body.   The Challenge for the exhibition was another stump doll - Oriental Dance by a fellow Hunter Valley dollmaker, Ann Maullin. I made mine as a Chinese Court concubine of earlier times. Her head was sewn from cloth, needle sculpted and then painted with gesso ( I think I did about 15 coats). After each coat of gesso, I sanded it with a fine sand paper. The last few coats were painted with gesso coloured with skintone acrylic paint and a flow me...

  On Sunday, 14 February, we will celebrate the Chinese New Year and welcome the Year of the Tiger.  So many of our family were born in the Year of the Tiger , including me, so we think it's a special year. Tiger people are known to be loyal, courageous, enthusiastic and generous, but of course there are some negatives - selfish, excessive and impulsive. Anyway, all the Tiger members of our family are really wonderful people!  Like lots of other family celebrations, it's a time to prepare and eat lovely food, and just enjoy being  together.  Happy Chinese New Year!    Exchange students preparing dinner at our place Grandchildren visiting our place. It will also be Valentine's Day on Sunday, so I wish you all a really wonderful day and am sending you all a big heart... Please also remember that there are only a few days to enter the ONE WORLD ONE HEART giveaway . Just scroll down to the blog post entitles One World One Heart ...

To celebrate February - the month of Valentine's Day, the Down Under Street Team (DUST) has a theme of "Roses are red, violets are blue" for its Etsy sale. I didn't really have anything in my shop which fitted this theme, so last night I created this little violet petal pouch just for the sale. I  searched my fabric stash for fabric with roses, but found this violet fabric which I forgot I had. I also adapted the pattern from one of inspirational books, Omiyage - Handmade Gifts from Fabric in the Japanese Tradition by Kumiko Sudo. I rediscovered this book on my shelf recently. It was a Christmas gift from my mother in 2003. I made little pouches like this previously and used a polymer clay face, but on this one, I covered a shank button with fabric and drew and coloured a little face. I was trying for " sweet and pretty" so I think I almost got it! The kiss curls were an afterthought. I have always thought fabric "beads" were a bit special, but t...