Don't you love copper?  Well here we are, Christmas is gone and the New Year is looming - have you finished doing the washing up yet? I finished all the glasses this morning so now my kitchen is clear - Hurrah! I am slowly catching up with what I got up to in November.  The 7th weekend of my Experimental Textiles course is a students choice. The group can negotiate which techniques they want to play with or they can use it as chance to catch up with their folders. Jamie Malden from Colouricious kindly made this video for me at the Harrogate show to give you all some idea of what we cover on the course.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vwcwmHjv8  (you can skip the advert at the beginning) Experimental Textiles teaches you all the basic techniques and skills that you need when working in textiles. None of my 'Hot Textiles' techniques are included in the course - They are fun but can be learned from books and videos...

A delicious combination of colour and glitz. Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I seem to have run out of steam . . .  I will be catching up over the next week or so as I still have some fabulous work to show you from my Experimental Textiles group and a class I taught at Denman College earlier this month. The workshop for the Cotswolds Guild was A New Starting Point - combining the heaviest iron-on interfacing S133 with layers of torn newspaper, painted Bondaweb and all kind of glitz. Using the heavy interfacing as a backing the decorated samples can be cut to shape with a die cutting machine.   Brooch blanks cut from this sample. Some of the layered samples before they were cut to shape                  . . .  and here are some of the layered samples before and after they were cut to shape.              ...

One of Jayne's crazy fish Apologies for the delay in updating the blog - life and family have got in the way. I am way behind with what I would like to share with you - I hope to catch up over the next couple of weeks. We had the first weekend of the Christmas Open Houses, it was great fun and we had loads of visitors. It always takes longer than you think to set up the house and we just managed to be ready for ten o'clock when we opened. It is great to be home for a few weeks and see so many of my friends.   We have 2 new exhibitors in the house this year - John Culligan - who turns wood - and Ria Wilson who makes fabulous jewellery. The rest of the team is in place - Ember Vincent who creates beautiful raku ceramics and Jose Heasman who makes wonderful stained glass pieces . . . . . . . and Mary's Lamb who makes beautiful hats, scarves and great little teddy bears.  . . . .  and Jayne Routel...