Tea Bags : Too Precious to Waste

stitched tea bags vessels - with battery operated tea light.

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness....

stitched used tea bag vessels

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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...

Haberdashery - Vintage Find

When I heard the theme for Tag Tuesday this fortnight is "Haberdashery", I rummaged in my sewing drawer to look for "vintage" items of haberdashery which I knew I had in my stash. I was particularly happy and surprised to find a number of cards of press studs, buttons and hooks and eyes. These brought back such great memories of the haberdashery shops which I used to frequent years ago when we lived in small country towns. They seemed to stock whatever you needed. You can tell the age of some of these items in my "habbie" stash as Australia changed to decimal currency on 14 February 1966, and the button card quotes a price of 1/3d... As I have been making little wearable pins for #the100dayproject, accompanied by a haiku, I thought that Day 30 had to be about haberdashery ... hence my tag within a tag for Tag Tuesday.... "Just a word recalls Sewing notions long since used: Haberdashery" This is a cloth /mixed media collage with...

Evolution of Message Stick Art Dolls

Message Stick Art Doll - stick, polymer clay, hand dyed & stencilled fabric with embroidery My message stick art dolls have evolved over the last couple of years. Why have I called these art dolls “Message Sticks” ? I wanted to recreate a doll which was based on traditional techniques, so I have used ideas from a few different cultures. Many traditional dolls were made from wood - often wrapped with fibres. In Egypt, several types of paddle dolls have been discovered in tombs in Egypt. The dolls are made of wood, flat, and constructed in a shape has led the form to be called a 'paddle doll'. The dolls seemingly follow a convention for the female figure, emphasizing the hips and hair. The wooden figures are usually painted with a geometric pattern of lines and dots. These patterns may reproduce tattos or ritual scaring in female Egyptian culture of the period or represent clothing or jewellery. A fine exampl...

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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