Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Walking around the inner city of Newcastle (NSW, Australia) is an interesting exercise, especially on a sunny day.  Last weekend, I stopped at 22 Church Street. It is currently the James Dowling Chambers housing  a group of barristers.   Counsel in these chambers practise in a variety of areas including family law, criminal law and civil and commercial litigation.   The first thing I wanted to know was who was James Dowling after seeing his portrait displayed prominently at the front door.  Sir James Dowling was the second Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW (30 August 1833 – 27 September 1844). Throughout his judicial career, according to  Sir Alfred Stephen , Dowling 'was remarkable not only for the most strict uprightness and impartiality, but for a painstaking and anxious industry rarely equalled. Accessible at all times, a patient listener, careful to ascertain every fact and ready to hear every argument which might be brought to bear on the case before him, h

It is now a month since the Flying Free Project was launched. Four free workshops have been held, averaging twelve participants each week. This project has been developed to honour and remember the women who tragically have died as a result of domestic violence. All  the proceeds from the sale of bird kits and completed birds on International Women's Day 2016 will be donated to women's refuges in our local area.  Unfortunately in the month we have been making birds, two women have been added to the sad statistics of 43 female domestic violence deaths in Australia this year... However, we have sat peacefully each Wednesday at Timeless Textiles Gallery stitching birds and I would like to share with you some of the  wonderful  moments and creative achievements of "Flying Free" in the last four weeks. Thanks to UK artist, Abigail Brown who gifted Timeless Textiles a basic pattern for a bird. .  Another 15 + birds flew south to

Lots of stitching - I am not sure what this technique is called but I learnt this at NCEATA - Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists, where one of the members, Aileen  demonstrated how she creates such interesting fabric from scraps. 1. Small scraps of patterned and/or plain fabrics are placed side by side on some iron-on  interfacing. 2. Iron everything down to hold in place. 3.Then use a decorative  stitch  on your sewing machine. Use a matching colour of one piece of fabric, stitch over it, going off the edges over the adjoining pieces. 4. Change the thread colour and stitch again, choosing one of the adjoining pieces of fabric. 5. Then stitch again ... repeating the sequence over and over again. The first project I made was a piece of fabric large enough to cover an A5 size note book. Then I tried the technique out on smaller pieces for tags I also tried a variation of the technique. Instead of  using bits of fabric, I coloured some white