Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 Background: Seam  are a contemporary textile collective based in Bath, England. We are emerging and established embroiderers, printers, knitters, weavers, dyers, fashion designers, eco-designers, makers, artists… …who want to make textiles that are irresistible, and find their way onto your body, into your house and onto your walls. We share a commitment to pushing the boundaries of our craft and making high quality objects realised in the hands and thoughts of the maker. We hope to make a sustainable living from textiles, work locally and bring textiles into contemporary focus This month, all textile artists are enouraged to share their love of textiles and respond to  30 different textile prompts for on  Instagram  during September. You can respond to as many of the prompts as you wish, this could be only a few or it may be all of them - with the hashtag #SeptTextileLove   Here is my first week of #SeptTextileLove  Days 1 & 2 - Introd...

Over the last two days, inspiration for #The100DayProject has come from my garden.... Today, 9/#100pinpoems celebrates the weeds!  "In April sunshine,  Dandelions multiply-  Yellow extroverts "  Materials : cotton fabrics, thread and safety pin.  Techniques: Fabric collage and  machine stitching.  The leaves of our grevillea , Robyn Gordon, have a beautiful deep colour in the afternoon and although not really blue, I really love the colour combinations of this piece of disperse dyeing.  8/#100pin poems  The colours are replicated in 8/#100pinpoems  "In the fading light,  Grevillea leaves darken  Like evening shadows. "  Materials: polyester and cotton fabrics, thread, disperse dyes, and safety pin  Techniques: Dyeing and stitching.  I really did like the colours in this dyed piece of fabric, so I couldn't help myself- I played around with them in a photo editing program and enj...

  As fascinating as the subject of "black holes" is, it was never my intention to create this piece true to its astronomical details so I have called this art work 'Black Holes'- an abstraction of the phenomena of a stellar collapse.  ( A  stellar black hole  (or  stellar-mass black hole ) is a  black hole  formed by the  gravitational collapse  of a  sta r .  . from Wikipedia)   This art work started with mark making on various pieces of paper with ink, paint, and stitch.   I collaged those bits of paper together and then digitally transferred the drawing on to silk and free machine stitched the silk collage using dissolvable fabric and overlays of tulle, lace and sequinned fabric.  Some hand stitching was also done to add a bit more texture of the piece as well as trapunto quilting in some parts.  I always had the dilemma of whether to hang this piece vertically or hori...

It's a Wrap   is  my newly devised workshop to be offered in 2011... wrapped art dolls. During the last couple of weeks, I have been busily trying to create a few samples for the workshop promotion. My ideas behind the concept for this workshop were: 1) make an art doll without a sewing machine; 2) use found objects and 'recycled'and 'upcycled' materials; 3 ) use  one or more wrapping techniques: and 4) include a surprise or something unexpected as part of the doll.  All of the dolls also use polymer clay and some have air dry clay bases as well. And so here is  the first of the samples "Unravelling" - no sewing at all, an armature made from sticks, wrapped with leftover wool, and an old bead sample, and for the unexpected, the doll is starting to be unravelled by a little bird nesting on her head. Sample 2 " Clearing away the Cobwebs" is made the the same way ... This one is my own favourite, although I took ages to make the cobweb. A reworki...

Since the beginning of the year, I have been struggling to find new inspiration, so this week I referred to a new book. Here is a dragonfly cache I made this week, all stitched and beaded by hand. It is a small hold-all for cosmetics, jewellery or just little trinkets.  My inspiration was this lovely book I got for Christmas - so appropriately named "Handmade Treasures from the Heart". It only arrived last week, as my husband bought it for me online, and the seller sent the wrong book . This one is so much better than the anatomy book sent by mistake! I am also inspired by my friends. I spent an afternoon recently with my very creative and productive friend, Bobbi from LamboArt. She has been making sumptuous Santas. These beautiful  art doll creations are certainly enough to inspire anyone.   Spending time with my family is not only relaxing it is also inspiring and motivating. A couple of days ago, we took our older grandchildren fishing ...