Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

  It's Spring here in our garden. Although the weather has been warm on a few days , it has been often wet and cold and yet the garden is blooming beautifully. Every September, for the last couple of years, I have participated in #SeptTextileLove  - a daily response to prompts by the Seam Collective to share a love of textile art.... here are my September  days 11-20 ...  Day 11- Reverse  Reverse side of an upcycled jacket  Upcycling an old denim jacket with boro type stitching/mending  Day 12 : Sloppy Craft  What about the name of the movement – “sloppy craft”? “Sloppy” is really a sound bite kind of name, irresistible once spoken out loud. The reference was used extensively with textile and fabric art, but examples can be found in all the crafts. “Sloppy” indicates intentionality, which might not be the case with the art. “Sloppy Craft” is an unfortunate phrase — perhaps other names like “informal” “casual” or “raw” would be less jarring than “s...

  Another week of  sharing love for textiles with the Seam Colelctiv'es social media cahllenge #SeptTextileLove....  Day 4:  PLAY  Most days , I play with materials , but I do love art and craft play dates with my grandchildren. All four of them and I have enjoyed creative play - these pics are ten years apart(2022-2012), so they suggest I am still playing and fabric dyeing has obviously been a ‘messy’ favourite . The tie dyeing kits are great for easy play - the squirt bottles can be managed by all ages. and the results are instant! Day 5 : PATTERN Over the last couple of years I have been experimenting with a technique which uses the decorative pattern stitches on a sewing machine. Using overlapping and layering different colours and patterns on scraps of fabric, with varying distances between the rows of stitching, a completely different patterned fabric is created. So, in a sense I use various tiny patterns to create a whole pattern . I am using this tec...

  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 wh...

 Background: Seam  are a contemporary textile collective based in Bath, England. We are emerging and established embroiderers, printers, knitters, weavers, dyers, fashion designers, eco-designers, makers, artists… …who want to make textiles that are irresistible, and find their way onto your body, into your house and onto your walls. We share a commitment to pushing the boundaries of our craft and making high quality objects realised in the hands and thoughts of the maker. We hope to make a sustainable living from textiles, work locally and bring textiles into contemporary focus This month, all textile artists are enouraged to share their love of textiles and respond to  30 different textile prompts for on  Instagram  during September. You can respond to as many of the prompts as you wish, this could be only a few or it may be all of them - with the hashtag #SeptTextileLove   Here is my first week of #SeptTextileLove  Days 1 & 2 - Introd...