Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

One of the things I like to do when I have a bit of spare time is play with photos I've taken ... today, when I didn't have spare time, I played nevertheless .  Having printed out black and white copies, I very quickly and roughly applied watercolours to the prints, and further cropped to make some interesting Facebook cover images. 

Here is a video of all the dolls in the Art Dolls Only Black and White Challenge... Just press on the image above to begin - only 2 and a half minutes of fantastic dolls!  And here also are some images of the doll I submitted for the challenge. It has been created from fabric which was made by putting black and white cotton scraps  side by side and stitching over them in different directions with different stitches on my sewing machine. The face is stitched free hand on the sewing machine.  To do this, lower the feed dogs on your machine, put your fabric tightly  in a hoop ( optional, but safe) and "draw" with your needle by moving the fabric in the hoop as you stitch. If you are a beginner, you might like to put some coloured pencil marks down to guide you, but I find by doing it freely, the faces are never the same and although they are not symmetrical, they do have some expression. 

I have missed Tag Tuesday ...  When the theme chosen by Sandie was "Wings" , I thought I could add to one of my series as well as practise my machine stitching skills for #The 100 Day Project which seems to be monopolising my time currently. For my "wings" tags, I created two on the theme of butterflies. Both are free motion stitched on my trusty Bernina sewing machine . I then applied "heat and bond", a double sided fabric adhesive and cut around the stitched "portraits". The cut outs were then applied to prepared tags made from cardboard,  covered with  book text and painted with white gesso. The red cheeks are coloured with Inktense pencil.  Here are the first two in the Red Cheeks series ... and they fit the "wings" theme too. 

Mandala XIV - hand stitched mandala - Annette Tubnor  Classic theme inspires Newcastle artists ...   Source :  Timeless Textiles website  The artists and makers who are members of the Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists (NCEATA) were challenged to respond in  “Black and White” for a new exhibition opening this month at Newcastle’s Timeless Textiles Gallery.  Black and White Art Works  by Ruth Spence, Anne-Marie Kelly and Karen Murray  For many of the textile artists, who typically love to explore the richness of colour in their work, the  “Black and White” theme led them to previously uncharted territory. Wilma SImmons said the NCEATA artists had worked creatively with the black and white palette.“When black and white take centre stage, an artist’s message, and their emotions, shine through” she said. “Stripping out colours adds clarity and depth to their chosen subject.” Detail of "Is it Just Black and...