Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

  It's  so close to the end of the month, but honestly, I'm not  ready to give up yet. I've only had one day when I was too tired to give any creative attention to making a card. Some other days have been hard to fit in the time as I set myself the goal of  taking a photo of a finished little work by 5pm each day.  What  have I  found difficult?  - choosing a postage stamp. - coming up with 'different' ideas and bringing  the ideas to life quickly  -  including both stamp and stitch into the design ( occasionally) .  - compromising by using some previously stitching samples.  - no time for revision.  What have I enjoyed?  - knowing I will have 30 Christmas cards made , ready for posting by 1 December.  - sorting through my stash of beautiful Christmas stamps.  - combining media ( although that is also what I found difficult!) . - deciding who will be the recipient of each card.  - the focus of crea...

Continuing  the series of collages for my October challenge... Collage #65 was taken from a photo taken in Kritipur in Nepal at a temple. I was immediately attracted by the splash of orange-red colour of the tikka on the statue in the image. I cropped the photo  to make that the focal point  and intensified the colour to give me some more defined shapes to abstract. Here is the result with torn paper and small scraps of cotton fabric which happened to be similar to the colour.  This is a short  ( 4 minutes) video of an artist  creating an abstract design from realistic drawing . I think it shows a great way of creating lines in an abstract design. 

Angels of Hope packed ready to be distributed. Doll making is not usually associated with Rotary Clubs. I think my Rotary club ( Rotary Club of Wallsend-Maryland in District 9670) is very special. We have supported local women's refuges and domestic violence resource centres over the years in many different ways. Making and donating little dolls - angels of hope - is just one of the ways. It is also a wonderful project for us, as our members love coming together and creating, even though many of them have little experience with sewing or making dolls. While we may be doing something for our community, we are learning some new skills and having fun at the same time. On Sunday, 29 September, we had the annual Rotary  "doll making" day. And if you are thinking only the women get involved, certainly not the case!  The men provide the numerous cups of tea and coffee which are necessary for this project, and  always serve the most beautiful and delicious mo...

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...

What a great Rotary Club I belong to! We have just started a new project to assist a local community support program for young women in crisis. It is a program which offers residential accommodation as well as a skills program. Its aims are to bring hope, build faith, reveal love and restore value.  Yesterday, eight  of us, including our Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar,  made some little dolls as gifts for the women. They are called Angels of Hope, adapted from a pattern from Rosalie Quinlan's book, Gift. While we are aware of the Comfort Doll Project, we wanted to make these dolls ourselves, and enjoy doing it together as a club project. We were all very keen and started the afternoon reviewing the pattern, gathering fabrics and then allocated jobs. Even the non-sewers had plenty to do. It was soon very clear that we were a very focussed, determined and industrious group, with sewing machines whirring, scissors snipping, stuffing tools filling dolls' bodies...