Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

#100gardenthreads / 14 & 15  African daisies and Gerbera  Materials:  hand dyed and print cotton fabric, threads, coloured pencil  Techniques: applique, fabric collage, hand colouring, free motion machine stitching, machine and hand embroidery.   

#100gardenthreads /10  The last page of folding book 2  -  Noisy Miners ( as opposed to Indian Mynas ) are native birds whih flock in our garden and feed  on the nectar of the grevillea.  Materials : fabric and thread  Techniques : fabric collage  and hand stitching.   

#100gardenthreads/5  Materials : paint, watercolour paper, used teabags, coloured pencils.  Techniques: Splatter paint patterns, tea bag applique, drawing and colouring.   

#the100dayproject  02/ #100gardenthreads  Materials: Tissue paper, first day cover envelope, sewing thread, acrylic inks, coloured pencils.  Techniques: Tissue paper collage and applique, hand colouring, machine and hand stitching.   

  Happy New Year - today is full of hope for a healthier, happier, more settled and  more stable times.  Today, we have had a grey day most unfitting for heralding a new beginning, but this afternoon, the skies are beginning to clear, just giving us a glimpse of better days ahead.  Did you know 1 January wasn't always the beginning of the year ?  The first time New Year's Day was 1 January was 45 BC , based on solar calculations instead of lunar cycles.  As the Roman Calendar needed reform, Julius Caesar enlisted the  experitse of an Alexandrian astronomer,   Sosigenes,    who advised  ignoring  the lunar cycle  and  recommended  following  the solar year, as did the Egyptians. The year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days, and Caesar added 67 days to 46 B.C., making 45 B.C. begin on January 1, rather than in March. He also decreed that every four years a day be added to February, thus theoretically keeping...

Chameleon rose from my garden.  The answer to "where is beauty?" seems  easy .... beauty is  all around us, but do we all see the same beauty ?  There is a Chinese saying, "Flowers look different to different eyes" Yes, we've all heard that before ..."Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  Contemporary artists worldwide often challenge our notion of beauty and many celebrate the ordinary and the familiar, making comment on daily rituals and consumer items.  None of this is very surprising since early man recorded every day life in cave paintings  and it has been happening in the art world ever since.  Up until 1960s, household items often appeared in still life paintings, but it was the contemporary pop art movement where artists sought out the commonplace to elevate artistically. What could be more "everyday" than Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell Soup Tins ?  https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-...

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...

Details of 17 &18 #100pinpoems Days 17 and 18 of #The100DayProject , I decided to stitch the wearable  pins rather than collage them with paper and/or fabric.  I diverted a little from my original plan for the 100 days.... I free machine embroidered them on my sewing machine - a very simple, quick and easy technique of drawing with thread. The technique involves moving the fabric from side to side or up and down,  while the machine is stitching ( with the feed dogs lowered). While the needle and thread are making the marks on the cloth, it is the control of the movement which ensures the marks go where you want them to. You don't need a fancy machine - just straight stitch and a bit of practice.     Sometimes, I work from a photo I've taken but I have also been making very quick sketches and working from them.  They are only a guide to follow, so are not meant to be accurate or artistic.  Sketch for 18 #100pinpoems  ...

Cool colours  As I proceed with #The100DayProject, I often notice that I have a preference for certain colours in a sequence of a few days.   The last three days have certainly been cool colour days.  Cool colours include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colours ( the red/organge/yellow palette). Cool colours are reminiscent of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing, and somewhat reserv ed. I am not sure if there is any hidden meaning here - perhaps I am now relaxing into the COVID social isolation restrictions and the slower pace of life?  14/#100pinpoems  Day 14:  Stepping quietly, Too loud an interruption  Startled magpies fly.  Materials: paper, fabric, thread, paint, safety pin  Techniques: painting, stitching, collage.  Day13:  Shy flower faces Spreading soft gentle colour Native violets  Materials: cloth, upcycled doily fragment, t...