Skip to main content

Bilby Infatuation

 

Wrapped wire and fabric bilby sculpture : Wilma Simmons 2016 


Over the years I have been fascinated with the plight of the bilby and it has inspired quite a few of my cloth creations...

With long pinkish-coloured ears and silky, blue-grey fur, the Bilby has become Australia’s version of the Easter Bunny. Unlike the rabbit, bilby numbers are falling rapidly.
There were originally two species but the Greater Bilby is now commonly referred to simply as ‘the Bilby’ as the Lesser Bilby (Macrotis leucura) is thought to have become extinct in the early 1950s... Bilbies are nocturnal, emerging after dark to forage for food. Using their long snouts, they dig out bulbs, tubers, spiders, termites, witchetty grubs and fungi. They use their tongues to lick up grass seeds.
Bilbies have poor sight and rely on good hearing and a keen sense of smell. To minimise threats from predators they’ll mostly stay within 250m of their burrows, but sometimes roam further afield depending on the food supply.
from https://www.bushheritage.org.au/species/bilby

Bilby Girl Travelling Art Doll ; finished by Wilma Simmons 2013 

In 2013, I made Bilby Girl - a "travelling" art doll and  this doll made its last stop at my place in Australia. Bilby Girl returned to her owner , the original doll maker in USA. These "travelling dolls " would start off as a body, then travel somewhere else and get a head, and then onto another country to get arms and legs, and at its last stop the doll would be clothed and accessorised. 
Australian Bush fabric 

Fast forward to this year, and in the textile.artist.org  Stitch Club, Christi Johnson's  workshop was about sculpting personal mythology inspired by an animal.   Reflecting on personal  interest in Australian fauna and the recent climate concerns,  I chose the bilby - it was close to Easter too! 
Bilby collage : Wilma Simmons 2025 

I made a toile from some abandoned eco dyed cotton and I really liked it, so did a bit of stitching on the front, and closed its opening on the back with a fabric circle, fussy cut from an Aboriginal print. For the other, I chose a really bright pink cotton, referencing the chocolate bilby Easter treats which were sold at easter to raise funds for the "Save the Bilby"  campaign. On the front of the pink bilby, I embroidered a plant which I hope resembles Acacia gordonii  (a wattle) which is also an endangered species  The back features another motif from an Aboriginal print. 
Bilby and Gordon's Wattle Embroidery : Wilma Simmons 2025 

I had so  much fun making this little soft sculpture, which I why I went searching for my 2016 version, tucked away at the back of a shelf in my workroom.   This wrapped sculptured bilby is made with all reclaimed materials - wire, scraps of fabric, with plastic bags as stuffing,.. It's great  to reminisce about why you return to favourite subjects  and while these might  be fun projects, the reality is far more serious.... 
Currently, there are more than 169,000 species on The IUCN Red List, with more than 47,000 species threatened with extinction, including 44% of reef building corals, 41% of amphibians, 38% of trees, 37% of sharks and rays, 34% of conifers, 26% of mammals, 26% of freshwater fishes and 12% of birds .https://www.iucnredlist.org/

Save the bilby and other endangered species ... 
Bilby work in progress/reclaimed materials : Wilma Simmons 2016 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
3 comments
Read more

From my workshop page....

  Current Workshops  Offerings  Thinking of a workshop for your group in  2022?    Art Doll Workshops : -  Garden Thread Dolls  (one day workshop   -  WoW -(Woman of Wisdom)    - embellished stump doll with either cloth head or clay head.  This is an a rt doll workshop .... either offered as a series of workshops or  2 full days  days!   -  Message/Story  Stick doll  - doll made with found objects and upcycled cloth.  ( one day)    -  Elemental totems  - stick doll variation , with sculpture  ( one or two days, depending on surface decoration of fabric)  TEXTILE AND MIXED MEDIA WORKSHOPS    Temari - embroidered wrapped balls in traditional style.    - Dipping Into Tea  - tea and embroidery on canvas with photo transfer on fabric.  ( two days)  work by Judith Bee, workshop participant.  - Tea Bag sculpture : ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Countdown 4: Turducken

I had always thought that 'turducken' was a very modern dish  - a deboned chicken inside a deboned duck, inside a deboned turkey.  The birds are stuffed inside the gastric cavities and spaces are filled with poultry stuffing. There appear to be a few different earlier versions of this dish . I n his 1807 Almanach des Gourmands, gastronomist Grimod de La Reynière presents his rôti sans pareil ("roast without equal")—a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting and a garden warbler—although he states that, since similar roasts were produced by ancient Romans, the rôti sans pareil was not entirely novel. The final bird is very small but large enough to just hold an olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds. Gooducken is a goose stuffe...
Post a Comment
Read more