Sewing has been a part of Elizabeth Jenkins’s life since she began helping turn the wheel on her mother’s sewing machine as a child.
“She showed me how to make dolls’ clothes and I’ve always sewn,” Ms Jenkins said.
“I make by my own clothes and then as you get older, you have enough clothes, don’t you, so I pushed it into a different direction.”
The great-grandmother, from Mount Barker, around 370 kilometres south of Perth, describes her sewing as an important creative outlet, taking inspiration from nature.
An example of a garlic and mushroom creation by Elizabeth Jenkins. (Supplied: Craig Mengham)
“I love free machine embroidery, exploring that in all sorts of ways with soluble paper so that you can, after you stitch, mould your pieces into whatever shape you want,” she said.
But her latest passion is turning the contents of her kitchen bin into small works of art.
Working with a sewing machine in her studio, she turns the inedible remnants of garlic cloves into small sculptures resembling mushrooms.
About a dozen of her “garlic and mushroom” creations sold out at the town’s most recent Open Studios event.
Tea leaves
Her studio also contains a large stash of used teabags, donated by friends.
Leaves are made from dried teabags. (ABC Great Southern: Rosemary Murphy)
Ms Jenkins dries the teabags, cuts them into a leaf shape, adding soluble paper for structure, before sewing in the veins and gently burning the edges.
She has made hundreds of the intricate works.
The teabag strings are collected and passed onto another friend who knits clothing out of them.
Friends supply the teabags used for the art. (ABC Great Southern: Rosemary Murphy)
“Nothing goes to waste,” Ms Jenkins said.
The microplastics in teabags can take many years to decompose.
Elizabeth Jenkins says nature provides a lot of inspiration for her work. (ABC Great Southern: Rosemary Murphy)
Family connection
Ms Jenkins’s granddaughter Bronte Jenkins is also passionate about art.
“I love using bold, bright colours for my artwork, so that seems to be my signature,” she said.
Bronte Jenkins enjoys using bright colours for her work. (ABC Great Southern: Rosemary Murphy)
Bronte Jenkins said it was something they shared as a family, including her young daughter Olivia.
“Grandma’s got her little niche, and even my mum is super creative as well,” she said.
“There was a good couple of years [in 2019-20] we were all doing the art trail together. I had my painting, grandma had her textiles, mum had her books and eco-dying.”