Hot Textiles at The Bridge, Brighton. 6th and 7th September

 
A scrumptious sample of textured and foiled Tyvek.

I am finally catching up with myself, have been in rather a headless chicken mode for the past few weeks - things are bit calmer now. I have a few days in between each teaching session now right up to when the shows start next month. As long as I keep moving I will be fine.

So . . . I have a new teaching venue in Brighton, just 10 minutes up the road from me, I can't believe how close it is - such a treat. I have booked some more workshops for next summer and once I have decided what I will be teaching, I will let you all know the dates and workshop information.

The Bridge Community Education Centre is light and airy place with plenty of well equipped rooms and a fabulous cafe with scrummy food. There is a huge car park and the Centre is close to Falmer station and is also on many bus routes. www.thebridgebrighton.com 

We had a group of seven fabulous girls.
This is the Art Room.

I was teaching a weekend version of Hot Textiles - I haven't taught this workshop for ages . . . It involves two days of working through several basic techniques that use heat tools. We worked with painting, applying and then decorating Bondaweb. We also worked with transfer foils and layered and zapped Tyvek. I forget that new people are coming over to the dark side of textiles all the time, and need to get to grips with the very basic techniques before they start layering and generally running amok!!!
Painting the Bondaweb and Tyvek.
Such ordered tables . . . it doesn't last long!

 On the first day we painted the Bondweb and ironed it onto various fabrics including black cotton and polyester organza.
Taking the backing paper of the painted Bondaweb once it has been ironed on and then waiting till it has cooled right down!!!

Painted Bondaweb can be decorated with anything dry and flat. Here we are using transfer foil, sequins and gilding flake.
Another fab sample.

 A sample that also has applied fabric snips onto the painted Bondaweb.

Here are few of the groups Bondaweb experiments - 






Applying Bondaweb onto polyester organza gives you the opportunity to zap your sample and play with texture.


Painted Bondaweb ironed onto red polyester organza and decorated with red transfer foil and sequins . . .


Painted Bondaweb ironed onto brown polyester organza that has been decorated with gold transfer foil, gilding flake along with gold and bronze sequins.

The next day we played with the Tyvek. This is such a fun product - as long as you don't paint it with thick paint!!!
 Three layers of Tyvek interleaved with polyester organza. Machine stitched and ready to zap on the left - and zapped on the right.

We worked with single sheets of Tyvek, to experiment with the textures that can be achieved. Then we layered three sheets of Tyvek with polyester organza and machine stitched the layers together.

Machine stitching the layers.

Once the layers were stitched together they were zapped with a heat gun. It is a great exercise to learn how to control the heat given out by the heat gun.
Learning the correct use of all heat tools is very important, both for your safety and to get the most out of them.
Zapping the layers of Tyvek and polyester organza with a heat gun.
Heat guns can be bought from Art Van Go -
www.artvango.co.uk

 As it was a Hot Textiles workshop I showed the group my new KK Glue which is heat fixed and can be decorated with transfer foil. This is then washable up to 40 degrees. This exciting new soft, powdered glue can be sprinkled, lightly, through a stencil, iron fixed, then foiled - for full instructions go to 
www.nid-noi.com/product/KKglue

I now have a good range of transfer foils in single colours or multi packs - do go and have a look. /www.nid-noi.com/product/TRANS
KK glue sprinkled through a stencil onto black pelmet Vilene light, the stencil is then removed (carefully), the glue is heat fixed and then foiled with bronze foil.

I think you can see from this that we had a great weekend - I will now start to think about what other workshops I can teach at this fabulous venue.

x x x

I am now about to get ready for a weekend in Canterbury. I am delivering a lecture tomorrow and a one day workshop on Sunday - with TWENTY students. This should be interesting . . . . The workshop is A New Starting Point -  my newspaper based one. I will write it all up for you on Tuesday before I belt up to Redditch to teach my two Experimental Textiles groups next week. I can't wait to see what they have been up to since we last met. They are all great girls - they work hard and know how to have fun . . .  and several of them bake - Bliss!

Have a great weekend.

x

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