Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

  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...

After making a tag for Tag Tuesday's theme Bunnies and Butterflies and changing the theme to suit myself to Bilby and Butterfly, I decided to make a few more as I had the fabric out on my work table. ...  So here is another bilby friend and a possum - still chasing butterflies.  And not being able to stop there , I took out some more fabric from my stash to add a couple of koala friends, delighting  in their playtime with butterflies.  You could also try making some fun tags as gifts for friends - just cut out some motifs from print fabric and use iron on double sided adhesive to the fabric and attach in layers to the cardboard tag.  These tags are available in my Etsy shop - free postage within Australia.

Having neglected Tag Tuesday for a month, I am making a comeback with a trio of tags for the current theme, selected by Wendy from the Design Team - please have a look at  the textural tags created by  the artistic friends at  Tag Tuesday . Here are my three....  Butterfly Collage  Tag - gelliplate print, wax ed cloth,, newspaper, tea bag, fabric  and buttons  Leaf Collage tag  - gelliplate print, wax  cloth, waxed and eco dyed paper, book page, tea bag, fabric and button  Owl Collage Tag  - gelliplate print, wax cloth, , newspaper, waxed and exodyed paper , tea bag, fabric  and buttons  I had actually started a tag for the previous"Animals" theme, and it is also textured with stitch, so I don't feel too bad about also including in this post.  Stitched Kangaroo Tag : Fabric -  applique, stitched and stamped;  collaged paper and fabric with an organza overlay. 

"As the sun sets" - charcoal,ink and watercolour sketch . Copyright Wilma Simmons   The "woodland" creature  as a trend in  fashion and home decor and  bespoke design was (and in many places, still is) very popular. Dashing deer antlers, awesome owls, and then fantastic foxes.... I know I am often behind the times with trends, but I was surprised to hear that foxes have been "in" for well over 3 years! Perhaps a year I thought, but it seems that foxes have been on the rise as a popular design motif for some time. At the well known  international Renegade Craft Fairs  there were reports of items with "fox" images to be the best sellers as early as 2011 and then followed the predictions...  " Trendspotters  called it   back in February. (2012) More and more, foxes are popping up on the radar as stylish elements in design, outfoxing the omnipresent owl as the  It  thing in woodland animals. Could foxes be the new owls in hip...