birds + beautiful hands


These girls of mine have been just as excited as I am to see some of the projects we have done together fine-tuned, practiced, photographed and included in the first series of Art + Craft classes for WEAVE+WONDER.
We have been making LOTS of birds lately...clay birds, handstitched + stuffed birds with button eyes, fluffy wool+feather birds, stitched birds. Lets face it, who doesn't go into flights of fancy when imagining soaring, floating, gliding, chirping, sweet-song birds. We spend a lot of our nature time listening + looking for birds...what colour, what type, what call, nests, eggs, you name it and we have uncovered it in our wanderings.
In two of our Autumn Series classes, birds take centre stage.


'Bird Life' explores the wonder + diversity of birdlife. The colours, the calamity...and partners this exploration with an introduction to sculpture. We look at famous artists who produce art by carving, moulding, forming objects in 3 dimensions - we have uncovered some amazing bird sculptures by Australian Artist Anna-Wili Highfield who forms magnificent bird + animal sculptures out of paper!
When we get down to the making, we explore quality natural materials and form clay, feather and wool birds...and make a special 'leaf litter' blanket...just to keep them warm when you take them home, you know!!! I will post photos from our recent trial class where we completed these projects.


'What do we see in Autumn' focus' on the power of observation and how much of the seasons we notice in Brisbane. This class is an introduction to stitching + silhouettes class. We talk of what we see in Autumn, the leaves, colours, what the birds do, etc. We discuss silhouettes - what is a silhouette? And look at some ways to make these at home with torches, pictures and a black marker pen, etc. We then learn some basic stitching techniques, how to thread the needle and begin...we create these divinely beautiful stitched silhouettes, contemporary enough to grace any wall, even hung in the embroidery hoop!