Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Black , White and Red - a favourite colour combination! Tag Tuesday has this as its current theme.  Here is my tag .... a stitched face. I use my sewing machine as my drawing implement.... a technique called free motion stitching or free hand machine embroidery. Of course, nothing is symmetrical or perfect but this is quite easy to do. Just lower or cover the feed dogs on your sewing machine, and move the fabric around manually while stitching and so the sewing machine "draws" a line, free hand.  In the photo, the black line is the stitched line - what I try to do is an unbroken line, so often I go over and over the same line to get to the next  section of stitching. When I have finished stitching, I cut around the stitching and attach the face to a prepared painted tag with heat applique. Then, I use Inktense pencils to colour  features and/or shade the face.  In "Spots" I have also appliqued the clothing and the head wear.  'Spots" is the first in ...

Worn on Remembrance Day (11 November) each year, the red  poppies   were among the first to flower in the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium in the First World War. In soldiers' folklore, the vivid red of the  poppy  came from the blood of their comrades soaking the ground. The tag I created is for Tag Tuesday which has the theme "Poppies" suggested by  Design Team member, Wendy   . It is a cloth tag, with a photo transfer - a family photo taken in England in 1915. The two servicemen pictured are my husband's grandfather and his great uncle.   I also cut out the poppy and leaf from fabric and coloured them with Inktense pencils. The red embroidered crosses are for the love  shared within this family. Lest we forget.

It's Autumn/Halloween at Tag Tuesday , the theme chosen by the talented leader of our group, Valerie. Yes it's very late in the fortnight to be posting, but here it is.  This is a stitched cloth tag. The background is batik cotton, with a photo transferred by blender marker. The leaves are appliqued to this background and then free stitched by machine in various shades of red, yellow and brown. Happy Autumn to all in the northern hemisphere!

Very busy in the last few days - needing more tea dyed fabric to "dress" three dolls . The cloth had already been dyed, most of it was silk and had been folded in my box which has been sitting permanently on my work table. Today I have put pieces together, ironed them again and given them a little airing in the sun. They look almost too good to cut into ... but back to work with scissors, needle and thread.