Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Every year, every day during Advent, I post on my blog .... I have had a series about crazy Christmas trees, an expose about Christmas cake, Christmas firsts and a Christmas alphabet which have been the most popular in the last few years. This year I won;t have access to art materials until 9 December so the bad news is the advent blog WON'T begin until 9 December and the good news is that it WILL begin on 9 December.... watch out for some Christmas envelopes!   Watch this space! 

Since 9 May this year, the Wednesday Group - Fearless Flowers has been busily creating beautiful hand made textile flowers to thank donors who support the Pink Meets Teal campaign for ovarian cancer research in Australia, and advocacy for funding fairness and equity for ovarian cancer research and treatment advancement.   We have received excellent media coverage on television, radio and in print and electronic media   From the ABC News 8 June 2019...  The Fearless Flowers project, launched a month ago, is already gathering momentum, with national and international artists making a commitment to get on board. Newcastle's Timeless Textiles gallery, Australia's only commercial textiles gallery, is home to the community art group, which is driving the national campaign. Situated at the historic Newcastle Lock-Up building, in the former women's exercise yard, members of the group are working industriously every Wednesday. PHOTO:  The hand-made Fearless Flower

I Here is flashback to a couple of  years ago - one of the most popular posts and one of my favourites... I hope you enjoy reading it again. I am soon to re photograph these dolls for a publication, so it was timely to republish this post.  Sunday, July 9, 2017 Wednesday's Children and Others. STITCHED UP is now in its third week of exhibition and breaking all records of visitors - such an overwhelming response - so it is inevitable that a few people have had their photos taken with Wednesday's children,  the stick doll installation.... First of all, Ben, a member of the amazing installation team at The Lock-Up. Thanks for taking such care installing 'the girls' - the digital laser level worked wonders and did I hear you talking to a few them?  Ben from the  installation team The Lock-Up  Wednesday's children up on the wall.  Then, of course , my own family - not all positive critiques,

Here is a video of all the dolls in the Art Dolls Only Black and White Challenge... Just press on the image above to begin - only 2 and a half minutes of fantastic dolls!  And here also are some images of the doll I submitted for the challenge. It has been created from fabric which was made by putting black and white cotton scraps  side by side and stitching over them in different directions with different stitches on my sewing machine. The face is stitched free hand on the sewing machine.  To do this, lower the feed dogs on your machine, put your fabric tightly  in a hoop ( optional, but safe) and "draw" with your needle by moving the fabric in the hoop as you stitch. If you are a beginner, you might like to put some coloured pencil marks down to guide you, but I find by doing it freely, the faces are never the same and although they are not symmetrical, they do have some expression. 

Continuing  the series of collages for my October challenge... Collage #65 was taken from a photo taken in Kritipur in Nepal at a temple. I was immediately attracted by the splash of orange-red colour of the tikka on the statue in the image. I cropped the photo  to make that the focal point  and intensified the colour to give me some more defined shapes to abstract. Here is the result with torn paper and small scraps of cotton fabric which happened to be similar to the colour.  This is a short  ( 4 minutes) video of an artist  creating an abstract design from realistic drawing . I think it shows a great way of creating lines in an abstract design. 

I love a monthly challenge which requires a daily art practice for a few weeks. Recently, I completed #The 100 Day Project. I enjoyed it but I'm not ready to tackle such a long distance activity again yet. Last month, I attempted #29 Faces, and am still completing them (only a few more to go). There are lots of really great challenges for October advertised on social media , but I thought, "Why not set my own challenge and then I own it completely!"  Thinking of the most relaxing creative activity, I have set myself at least 20 torn paper and fabric collages for October.  I am also trying to make "abstract" interpretations of things I see while walking in my neighbourhood or as in some of these,  something experienced whilst on a recent trip to Nepal. I must emphasise that these are very loose interpretations and are not meant to look in the least like the photos of the real scene.  Inspired by a gymea lily .... I really love this plant, and enjoy photo

  It's great to celebrate your heritage right where you live ...  Newcastle China week 2019 showcased  a 2-day program consisting of a  Wine and Tourism Business Forum   on Friday 6th September and a free   Cultural Festival   on Saturday 7th September. The Cultural Festival took place in the beautiful bush campus in Callaghan at the University of Newcastle, only about five minutes from where I live.  It's a  celebration of  the contemporary and traditional Chinese culture, food, art, lion and dragon dances with interactive displays, food markets, wine tasting and demonstrations. The food offerings were many and varied from traditional Chinese snacks to all sorts of Asian and fusion inspired treats, as well as ubiquitous festival food like fairy floss!  The Festival aims to celebrate cultural diversity and inclusiveness while offering a fun-filled day to engage with students and welcome the community to the campus.

At Tag Tuesday   design team member, Michele is celebrating the summer sun in the northern hemisphere. Here in Australia, the winter sun is milder  but still shines brightly on clear crisp days.    Lately we have been experiencing quite grey days with heavy cloud cover, but the sun seems to peek out from behind for at least some of the day - my inspiration for this tag.  My tag for this theme is paper collaged and then stitched by machine. The papers include magazine pages, prints of my own photos, gelli plate prints and mono prints with wax . I stitch paper collages with a very old Bernina Nova ( free form stitching with the feed dogs lowered)  I am also including in this post some of the collaged envelopes I made for #The100 Day Project  - these envelopes were based on scenes or experiences I had while out walking each day for 100 days, so it is no surprise that  sunshine and sunsets were featured.  All 100 collaged envelopes can be seen  on my  Instagram   or Faceb

I have missed Tag Tuesday ...  When the theme chosen by Sandie was "Wings" , I thought I could add to one of my series as well as practise my machine stitching skills for #The 100 Day Project which seems to be monopolising my time currently. For my "wings" tags, I created two on the theme of butterflies. Both are free motion stitched on my trusty Bernina sewing machine . I then applied "heat and bond", a double sided fabric adhesive and cut around the stitched "portraits". The cut outs were then applied to prepared tags made from cardboard,  covered with  book text and painted with white gesso. The red cheeks are coloured with Inktense pencil.  Here are the first two in the Red Cheeks series ... and they fit the "wings" theme too. 

During my journey with #The 100 Day Project  ,  I featured mostly stitched collages of  my observations of "nature". I have been trying to walk every day around my neighbourhood or wherever I am and notice some of the things I usually take no notice of. The exceptions have been if I have been doing something different or if I am walking around the city. I am drawn to heritage buildings and enjoy interpreting them in this way - paper and cloth stitched in a collaged fashion on a used envelope. Here are the results of a few.  Today I will be completing Day 59 of 100. If you would like to see more of what I have done, the photos of other envelopes can be found on a few different social media sites - Instagram   or Facebook  

I am very happy to be included in the 2019 workshop program at Studio CC. There are still places available for this creative workshop -   Now only  one day : 22 June 2019.   Please go to the  Studio CC website   for registration information .