Myrtle – Australian hard wood

Every now and again someone special walks into your life!    It doesn’t happen often, and it comes out of the blue.  To acknowledge this friendship my husband Chris crafted this beautiful jewellery box from a flat piece of myrtle hardwood.  It also features tiger myrtle wood with its eye-catching textured lines.  

I made the fabric insert, based upon my love of the Ozzie outback and colours of the desert.   This features silk and cotton fabrics, embroidered on my machine with lots of lovely threads, especially Superior Rainbow threads. 

This box is on its way to Fibre Forum at Orange – being delivered by a colleague who is attending a week’s long workshop there.   One of the international tutors will get a nice surprize in April.   I cant wait to hear her excited response.   It is such a nice feeling to give freely something that is made from the heart and hands, from the two of us too!

A journey returned me to collage

A recent short Victorian break lead me the spa water country of Daylesford and Hepburn Springs.  

Surprize – surprize – I discovered the textile shops were even better than the waters!   A huge bag of pieces of Indian sari fabrics came home me with me, along with yummy other fibres I discovered along the way.  

Back home I found some silk fabric that I dyed in the microwave to produce glorious colour and such a soft feel.  

This formed the base colour of my collage using wool and silk rovings, fabric, yarns, and of course my Indian textile pieces.   It took a little journey to stimulate my creative direction to return to this type of collage work again.