'Prettys' and playtime at Denman

The fountain in the grounds with evening sunlight on the water. Denman College has very beautiful grounds.

This is going to be a lengthy post, I don't have time to write two and split the images.

You may remember my recent post about my lovely group at West Dean and my saying it is not often you get a group that gels so well and that you have a lot of fun with. Well I taught another such group this week. They were great fun and very naughty!!! There is something about the groups I teach at Denman College www.denman.org.uk  They all seem to get on with each other quickly. That means they relax more and then feel comfortable being naughty! We did have a lot of fun.
The course was a three day 'New Layered Textiles' workshop and basically takes the students through the processes in my book Layered Textiles.

The first thing we did was paint up all the products so we would be ready to get down to work with all the products ready to play with. As usual we started with painted Bondaweb -

 Painted Bondaweb with gilding flake, dried flowers and free machine embroidery.

 Painted Bondaweb with glitter and sequins.

Painted Bondaweb with gilding flake,sequins and hand stitch.

 This was one of my favourite pieces - painted Bondaweb ironed on to calico and decorated with strips of painted newspaper - just ready to stitch . . .
 
 We also tried Hot Spots! These were decorated with gold foil and CS500 Vilene Spunbond cut with a soldering iron and applied to the Hot Spots!

 
More Hot Spots! with shapes cut from CS500 Vilen Spunbond

The group then tried Tyvek. We layered heavy Tyvek sheets with polyester organza. The layers were machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun to reveal different layers of colour.

 



Then it was soldering iron time. After the usual scary stories of what you can do to hurt yourself with a soldering iron the students ironed plain Bondaweb onto the back of three different coloured pieces of CS500 Vilene Spunbond. Polyester organza was also used. The group then used the soldering irons to cut shapes from the CS500 and applied them to a background of CS500.

 

This sample shows leaves cut from CS700 which is heavier than the CS500.


We then moved onto using the heat gun with the heavier weights of Vilene Spunbond, CS700 and CS800.
You get a fabulous crunchy edge when you use a heat gun to 'cut' the Spunbond.

 A combination of layers of CS500 (the lightest weight) and CS800 (the heaviest weight)


 Layers of CS800 ironed dyed Heavy Pelmet Vilene Plus.

  . . and again

 A mixture of weights.

  . . and again.

This was a favourite piece for the whole group showing just how beautiful a piece can be just using painted Bondaweb and zapped strips of Vilene Spunbond.


It was then time to get the sewing machines out - it wasn't toooo traumatic. Sometimes you can spend most of the time trying to get the machines to work. This time it wasn't too bad. After a few false starts we were O.K.
The group layered dyed and painted newspaper with polyester organza and stitched the layers together to create faux chenille -

 
 

With the newspapers that were left we then started to layer up painted newspaper with painted Bondaweb and lots of 'prettys' - gilding flake, sequins, glitter and mica flakes - this was definitley the favourite session of the three days


 





A sketch book covered in strips of 'pretty' newspaper. Fab!


 From the left - Liliane, Mavis, Sheila, Barbara, Sue, Elaine behind Jenny who is sitting on Mary's lap and then Avril. Pauline had to leave early so missed the photo call but I will be seeing her again. A group never to be forgotten!!!!

 x

 I left Denman which is in Marcham near Oxford after breakfast on Friday morning and drove up to Bradford in Yorkshire to look at a Volvo I was wanting buy - it is very pretty - it matches my hair!!!
How girly is that??? The car drove well so I bought it and arranged delivery for this week - how Exciting! My poor old bronze Volvo is costing too much to run now, it has done me proud.
I then drove my good old bronze Volvo down to Elland to see Chris at Vilene for a catch up and to discuss what we would be doing at the trade show next February. I then drove down to Newark in Nottinghamshire to see David at Craftynotions to collect some paints for my workshop at Bobby's next week. It was great to catch up with him - and I discovered some new 'prettys' - I stole these (below) to use on this weeks workshop. They will look gorgeous on painted Bondaweb. I don't know what they are called. Will find out this week so you can all order them.

 
New 'prettys' from Craftynotions. www.craftynotions.com

By then is was five o'clock, a lovely time travel anywhere on a Friday night, not! so I rang my great friend Brenda Killigrew who runs my Experimental Textiles course at IDC in the Old Needleowrks in Redditch. Brenda was happy to meet me in Redditch for a meal so I drove down to Redditch in reasonable time and had a FAB meal. I left at eight o'clock to drive down to Brighton and got home at half past eleven. Not a bad run.

Needless to say I was VERY tired yesterday so didn't get the blog done. I had trouble moving let alone thinking and typing . . . .
Today has been busy getting a pile of orders ready to post tomorrow and sorting what I need to teach my new Print, Paint, Stitch and Play at Moor Hall www.bobbybritnell.co.uk/workshops/OtherTutors It will be wonderful to see Bobby again - she is such fun and a brilliant artist. Her studio is a wonderful place to teach. I still haven't caught up with all my emails, apologies to a certain gentleman living in the Portsmouth area - I will reply this week - sorry baby! x

On the way to Bobby's I will be dropping in to to see my mate Angie Hughes for lunch, I haven't seen Angie for ages either.

x

Since www.nid-noi.com has had a face lift I have had a lot more orders, AND I have managed to keep up with them - YEEhhaa!!!

If you have read to the end of this post - Thank You. I hope you enjoyed it.




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