Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 Thank you to all who entered the birthday blog giveaway and thank you for your good wishes, too. The process of choosing the winners started at 10am Australian Eastern Standard time today, with a very trustworthy and  independent assistant. I can guarantee that she had no vested interests. All the names of the participants were put into a felt bowl, and my assistant chose three - one at a time. Congratulations to winners :  Maegan Morin, Leilani Lyons, and Jennifer 57!   I will contact you now to decide who gets what and to get your postal address so the gifts can be posted as soon as possible. 

Giveaway Gifts T his week is blog giveaway time! Last week I celebrated my birthday.  I’ve had far too many to count the candles, but I had a wonderful party on the weekend with my family - with an indulgent birthday cake, favourite foods cooked by my husband and great company. ( In case you were wondering about the writing on the cake , Por Por = Chinese grandmother)     I also got great gifts from  my family and friends. There seemed to be a bit of a theme this year – with many of my gifts and cards depicting matryshoka ( babushka) dolls and tea drinking.   As it is also winter here in Australia ,   it was easy for me to  decide what I could offer as gifts  in this birthday giveaway. All the gifts are handmade by me. Gift 1 - two little fabric matryshoka dolls  Gift 2- a little bag made from colourful teapot and teacup fabric . The design is called a jester bag, but it is suitable for carrying s...

A bilum is a string bag made by hand in Papua New Guinea, using a string looping technique. Traditionally, the string used was hand-made, from plant material – the bark of a plant called “lepa”. Now, however, most bilums are made from store bought brightly coloured yarn and many contemporary patterns have become popular, even those generated by computer. Bilums are used to carry a wide range of items, from shopping goods in large bilums to personal items in purse-sized varieties. Mothers often carry their babies in bilums, and the bilum is said to be “womb-like” and associated with security and reassurance for a baby. In the past, bilums were used to carry food home after gardening or hunting. Bilums were also used to decorate an area where a dead person would be laid for viewing. Another really important and significant use of bilums was as contributions to the payment of the bride price. Bilums remain as a prized gift to exchange with friends or visitors. As I have recently retu...

With the weather becoming a bit colder, I decided to finish a scarf I started last year. I loved this pattern when I saw it in a Patons book, and a few of us at one of my dollmaking groups decided to make it - so you will probably see various versions of this around Newcastle this winter.     I enjoyed knitting the flowers and the leaves, but I did not enjoy the sewing up, so that is why the fifteen flowers and thirty leaves were all finished but not assembled. I wanted to wear this to my friend Connie's birthday last weekend, so took a couple of nights in front of TV to sew the flowers and leaves together.   I chose some sunflower fabric at Dollies last Saturday and had a pattern in mind . It's been made up into a little drawstring bag, constructed from a square, folded diagonally, and then the corners are folded in to create a pocket. What I love about this bag is that the lining and pockets are all made in one - the folding means that the outside fabric is also th...