Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 A small selection of pin poems from the collection #the100dayproject have been released for sale on ETSY ....  Link to my Etsy shop :  https://www.etsy.com/shop/empresswu Link to #the100day project:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/empresswu/albums/72157713803669781

Stitching a 'garden' background - Wilma Simmons  Using gardens as inspiration for art is long established practice in the fine arts, including textile arts. Monet's painting are amongst my favourite artworks and there is no shortage of  treatises about the gardens in art.    https://www.booktopia.com.au/monet-s-garden-in-art-debra-n-mancoff/book/ Some of my favourite textile artists ( like Anne Kelly) turn to gardens as a source of unending inspiration.  https://www.textileartist.org/small-worlds-recycled-textile-art-by-anne-kelly In a considerably more humble way, I have recently been featuring plants from our garden in my small wearable art pin series for #the100dayproject. Although we are in the winter phase of the garden where the colour palette is a more subdued, there are still some beautifully bright flowers, like the purple black eyed African daisies, late summer marigolds, tiny native violets and their potted cousins, violas. Even the p...

For all of us, being close to home is not an option currently. There are many positive ways to think of being close to home -  one, of course, is to find inspiration and make art . Recently, probably in the last few years, the sights and sounds in my neighbourhood have provided me with enough material for a lifetime of art making.... and I don't live in a magical place, just a simple ordinary  residential suburb in a regional city in NSW,  near some dedicated bushland, walking tracks, a village shopping centre and a hospital.  On daily walks in the neighbourhood, I have picked up sticks from the ground to make hundreds of "stick" dolls,  fallen leaves to dye and print cloth and paper, flowers and other plant bits  for  various artworks.  I am very grateful to have so much to work from so close to home and as I complete my second #the100day project - 100 small wearable art pins, I have tried to find a new way each day of express...

When I heard the theme for Tag Tuesday this fortnight is "Haberdashery", I rummaged in my sewing drawer to look for "vintage" items of haberdashery which I knew I had in my stash. I was particularly happy and surprised to find a number of cards of press studs, buttons and hooks and eyes. These brought back such great memories of the haberdashery shops which I used to frequent years ago when we lived in small country towns. They seemed to stock whatever you needed. You can tell the age of some of these items in my "habbie" stash as Australia changed to decimal currency on 14 February 1966, and the button card quotes a price of 1/3d...  As I have been making little wearable pins for #the100dayproject, accompanied by a haiku, I thought that Day 30 had to be about haberdashery ... hence my tag within a tag for Tag Tuesday....  "Just a word recalls Sewing notions long since used:  Haberdashery"  This is a cloth /mixed media collage with...

As #The100Day project enters its third week, it's time to do a little re-assessing.... the coordinators of the project keep in touch throughout and we are given prompts along the way to encourage us all to keep going. Today's newsletter asked us to ask ourselves these questions ... and my answers are in red. What’s getting you energized lately?  Finishing & posting by 6pm every day,  What are you learning?  To let go and not overthink the process.  What do you do when you don’t feel like doing your project? Just do it.  How are you measuring progress? Blogging  What’s working, and what’s not? Setting a time limit- and keep to it!  And here are my latest two #100pinpoems  15/#100pinpoems   Day 15 was easy . When I woke up, there was a discussion on ABC radio about tea on British National Tea Day....   and the usual questions...  "Debating again Pot or bag, milk first or last?...

Cool colours  As I proceed with #The100DayProject, I often notice that I have a preference for certain colours in a sequence of a few days.   The last three days have certainly been cool colour days.  Cool colours include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colours ( the red/organge/yellow palette). Cool colours are reminiscent of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing, and somewhat reserv ed. I am not sure if there is any hidden meaning here - perhaps I am now relaxing into the COVID social isolation restrictions and the slower pace of life?  14/#100pinpoems  Day 14:  Stepping quietly, Too loud an interruption  Startled magpies fly.  Materials: paper, fabric, thread, paint, safety pin  Techniques: painting, stitching, collage.  Day13:  Shy flower faces Spreading soft gentle colour Native violets  Materials: cloth, upcycled doily fragment, t...

Today , Day 11 of #The100Day Project is International Haiku Poetry Day... What is haiku?  Haiku is a type of short poetry that is usually three sentences long. First popularized in Japan in the 17th century, Haiku as a poetry genre has been adopted by many languages around the world. In English, the genre first became mainstream in the early 20th century. In its Japanese avatar, haikus traditionally have three lines with 17 syllables. The first and last sentences have 5 syllables and the second line has 7 syllables. Haiku tend to give an interesting insight about something trivial, usually some aspect of nature or the seasons. from  https://www.timeanddate.com/ 11/#100pinpoems Materials : paper, fabric, thread, safety pin  Techniques: Collage, stitching, painting   Having decided to complete my 100 day Project by each day writing a haiku (or at least a pseudo haiku) and create an accompanying wearable pin , today  should be  a...

7/ #100pinpoems  Today was Day 7 #The100DayProject ....  You may remember that I have undertaken to make 100 wearable pins with coloured safety pins and an accompanying haiku or at least a pseudo haiku with three lines and a 5-6-5 syllable structure.  No. 7 was "in the pink" . This one came about  because my granddaughter and I are having a daily challenge from afar... the challenge today was to wear something pink and do something with our hands or feet. We then swap photos of each other  ( see left) - a diversion from social isolation and school holidays.  No 7 : Materials : paper, fabric, buttons, threads,  safety pin.  Techniques: collage, stitching.   No. 6 was in response to the beautiful day we experienced on Sunday, yesterday - clear blue skies and warm sunshine. I took a photo in the morning as I was drinking tea on the verandah and the clear rays of the sun in the photo became stitch lines on the little wearab...

Each day for 100 days, I will try to create a small wearable pin, with a coloured safety pin, and add a haiku to reflect the day's feelings, observations or experiences. This project began with the idea of using supplies I already had at home and in the quantity to create something for 100 days... so I found 100 coloured safety pins and I have an even larger supply of the luggage tags as I could only purchase them years ago in lots of 500.  I wanted to make something that perhaps could be gifted to friends and family , so as "brooches" have also been on my mind, I thought of "wearable pins." The addition of  the little three lined poem, a haiku, was just an idea to fill the space on the tag! I decided on haiku because of the simplicity of its  three lines and 5-7-5 syllables formation and the recording of a "moment". Well, I did think it was simple until I tried the first, and found myself counting the syllables over and over again for each ...