Skip to main content

How does your garden grow with crayons?


How does your garden grow with crayons? With a little bit of imagination and lots of stitches! 
Why does your garden grow with crayons? Because that was the challenge of the monthly assignment of my creative embroidery course.  It was a surprise to open my package and discover a packet of twelve coloured crayons, some white cotton fabric and lots of coloured stranded embroidery cotton. The task was to create a stitched garden, after colouring the fabric with crayons. I have always loved the impressionist Monet gardens, so I approached this task happily.... until I realised how long it takes to fill a space with stitches!

Crayon applied to cotton fabric with texture ( rubber stamp under the fabric)
- Empress Wu Designs 2015 
Stitching the "distant" spaces first
- French knots, Lazy Daisy stitch, fly stitch, straight stitch.
Empress Wu  Designs 2015 
Detail  1 - Crayon Garden - Empress Wu Designs 2015
(French knots, fly stitch, straight stitch, lazy daisy stitch) 
Detail  2 - Crayon Garden - Empress Wu Designs 2015
(French knots and straight stitch) 
Detail  3 - Crayon Garden - Empress Wu Designs 2015
( woven roses, straight stitch, Cretan stitch, double knot stitch, lazy daisy stitch) 
 Detail  4 - Crayon Garden - Empress Wu Designs 2015
(Cretan stitch) 
Detail  5- Crayon Garden - Empress Wu Designs 2015
Crayon Garden - Wilma Simmons, Empress Wu Designs, 2015 




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Non-Committal Collage Anything Goes

Have you heard of non-committal collage?   I hadn't until one of the other participants of the 100 Day Project started doing this each day and showing the results....  Here are  Peggy's  rules :  1. S elect 9 scraps of paper from  collage  box/stash  2. Make three  different compositions using each scrap at least once.  (some pieces can be used more than once)  3. Do not alter the scraps of paper in any way.  4.Do not use glue.  5.Take photo, disassemble and return scraps to box.   I thought this would be a fun and quick exercise to do for Tag Tuesday's theme , Anything Goes... so here are my "non-committal collage" tags....  Did you spot the nine pieces? Would  you like to suggest some titles?   And I repeated the exercise before putting back the 9 scraps of paper, so these are different items.  Hope you will try this exercise -  it is lots of...

Giveaway - Gifts for You on My Birthday

Giveaway Gifts T his week is blog giveaway time! Last week I celebrated my birthday.  I’ve had far too many to count the candles, but I had a wonderful party on the weekend with my family - with an indulgent birthday cake, favourite foods cooked by my husband and great company. ( In case you were wondering about the writing on the cake , Por Por = Chinese grandmother)     I also got great gifts from  my family and friends. There seemed to be a bit of a theme this year – with many of my gifts and cards depicting matryshoka ( babushka) dolls and tea drinking.   As it is also winter here in Australia ,   it was easy for me to  decide what I could offer as gifts  in this birthday giveaway. All the gifts are handmade by me. Gift 1 - two little fabric matryshoka dolls  Gift 2- a little bag made from colourful teapot and teacup fabric . The design is called a jester bag, but it is suitable for carrying s...

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks ....  The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and  message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or  my husband or from off cuts gifted to us  from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks.   Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt  or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...