Putting Postage Stamps on the Map

Postage stamps feature a lot in my textile artwork.... and I have a lovely collection of old stamps. However, I also belong to a small group of artist friends who every three months, challenge one another with gifts of first day covers or stamp series. A few months ago, I interpreted a series of stamps from New Zealand ...

In this round of challenges, I received a beautiful series of Australian stamps, depicting wonderful locations in different states.

At first I was at a loss of what to do with them to show them off... and at the time, I was stitching some backgrounds on my sewing machine.... The background is a collage of scrap fabrics and then overstitched and overlayed with rows of decorative stitch patterns . I really liked one of these backgrounds for these stamps as Australian colours were all there..

After stitching the stamps onto the background, I "couched " contour lines in a random way.... this map does not depict a certain place. It is an invented map.

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Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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