Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

What a week - four days of workshops and a witch doll project dinner with Gumnutters Doll Group! I spent a whole day dyeing every bit of cotton and velvet fabric in sight, preparing a great stash for future projects. All of this fabric has been dyed with procion dyes. This was a wonderful day with textile artist, Roberta Hodgson. My class with the Sydney high school students was great fun, too. We did some wet felting, but it seemed to prove that glittery butterflies and love hearts are favourites amongst fifteen year old girls, whatever their background, circumstances and aspirations. The weekend was a Gumnutters' birthday celebration with the "unveliing" of the witches travelling doll project on Friday. . There were two groups of four and the project was "a body in a bag" , with each person working on the other three group members' dolls  with a theme of witches and wizards , but no wizards appeared. My multi-coloured organge/purple and green body re...

Felted balls like these are really easy to make - a great project for beginners...   It all started when my mother sent me a cutting from an old magazine about felting balls.  I read the instructions and this seemed very simple - so simple that I could do it while babysitting. I thought it would be a good afternoon activity and felting lesson for my one year old granddaughter who was suffering from a cold on Monday and was tired of playing with toys! I got her interest by putting the sticky tape and two bottle tops on her little plastic table ... and so the process began. Step1 :  Making the rattle for inside the ball  - take two bottle tops and put some little stones inside one and tape the other on top. Check that the tape is secure. Step 2: Gathering wool supplies - you will need some wool for the core of the ball ( wool roving, pieces of an old woollen garment or blanket.), some wool roving for the outside of the ball and some novelty yarns, s...