September Textile Love #1, #2, #3

It’s September - the month of #SeptTextileLove, sponsored by the Seam Collective , when we are prompted to share our love of textiles each day on social media. Each day, a prompt is given and participants are asked to respond in a way which highlights textile art, especially our own.

Day 1: Introduction … my name is Wilma Simmons and I live in Lambton , a suburb in a beautiful city, Newcastle NSW Australia . I am a textile artist continually practising and working to ‘find my thread’. I love to stitch by hand and machine , I love to collage and I love to use various materials including snail mail ephemera, recycled and found objects .

At this very moment , I have just stepped away from my sewing machine, from a small experiment with stitch and postage stamps…

Day 2 : Discipline/Craft I find it difficult to name one speciality area of textile art I enjoy the most. I chose images of my stick dolls ( Garden Threads series) as examples of ‘doll making’ as a discipline which gives me the most options to do what I enjoy - to respond and engage with Nature , to design, to make a pattern , to collage , to stitch by both machine and by hand and to recycle materials .

Day 3 : Prompt - Current Project Day Just one? This project has hardly been started but all the prep is done . It is an interpretation of a watercolour landscape by my friend , Anne at Timeless Textiles who is curating an exhibition of textile art interpretations of her selected artworks. I am attempting a stitched shaded relief map of the area depicted in the painting . The materials I have chosen are silk , organza , metal fabric thread and beads.

Hope you will follow along with me this month.... thanks.

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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...

Wednesday's Child /2

Work in Progress - 3 of the 193 for "Stitched Up"- Wilma Simmons The work for the "Stitched Up " Project continues. See the previous "Wednesday Child" post for the background to this art project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Newcastle Industrial School. I have been documenting the progress of my work, so I thought it might be interesting to share some of the early stages of the "stick dolls" ... Here are some of the beginning steps.. Sticks collected while walking the bushland in my neighbourhood Drying and getting rid of any insects - oven heat 75 degreesC for approx 1-2 hours. Trimmed and cut if necessary Ends sealed with matte sealing solution. Drying - solution goes on white but dries clear. First wrapping - foil to create a body shape Second wrapping - stretch fabric. Third wrapping - fabric strips Some stitching - more stitching and embellishment to ...

29 Faces

"29 Faces " is an online art challenge - blog and Facebook . The challenge is to create a face each day of September ( with one day for catch up) .... I decided to take up the challenge to practise drawing faces for my dolls and to practise techniques with coloured pencils. I received a set of 60 pencils from my daughter last Christmas so I wanted to be sure I used them before next Christmas! I love making tags so I combined tag making with "29 Faces", so I will also have some unique Christmas gift tags for gift giving this year. Here are the first 9 faces for the first 9 days of September

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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