A New Starting Point at The Bridge - Brighton. August 24th - 27th.


My teaching table . . . Scrummy!

A New Stating Point is now by far the most popular workshop I have ever developed. It is very satisfying when a workshop 'works' so well.
I taught a 4 day version of this at The Bridge Community Education Centre in Brighton. A scant 15 minutes door to door - it is such a treat to teach so close to home.

The Bridge is a great place to work and the food is fabulous. More of that later . . .

A New Starting Point includes my 'Backgrounds and Prettys' tearing and layering technique and making newspaper faux chenille.
Torn and layered book pages with painted Bondaweb and lots of gilding flake. 

Painted Bondaweb ironed onto newspaper and then printed with a printing block. Simple and very beautiful.

A torn and layered sample printed with a spiral printing block.
Another torn and layered sample that has been printed. The print has been highlighted in selected areas to give definition.
All the commercial blocks I use on workshops are from Colouricious
On my design workshops the students make their own blocks.

Painted Bondaweb ironed onto newspaper and decorated with painted polyester organza.
The girls working hard.
Tearing the painted papers and ironing onto a background of newspaper and painted Bondaweb.
A torn, layered sample that has been decorated with lines of red machine stitch.
A table full of great samples.
Torn and layered papers ironed onto  pre-coloured Decovil 1 ready to make a book cover.
Working hard . . .
Playing with torn shapes and colour.
Pages from an old gardening magazine torn and layered with painted Bondaweb. This has been decorated with glitter and sparkles

 The second phase of the workshop is to develop some faux chenille samples.
These are created by layering painted newspaper and polyester organza and stitching channels which are then cut, leaving the bottom layer in one piece!!
The cut channels are then distressed to great effect.
 
 Stunning textures - I just LOVE this technique. . .

 . . almost as much as - CAKE!!

I was invited by my lovely friend Jayne for high tea while I was teaching at The Bridge - what a treat. Jayne had won the delisciousness in a competition and wanted to share it with me!! What a dear friend!!!
 
Jayne inspecting our show and tell at the end of the course, chatting to the lovely Penelope.

Jayne is one of my ex students who did the full 4 year course of Experimental Textiles and is now a tutor and felt artist. She also works in the office at the Bridge. You may have seen her at the NEC where she helps with my stands every March.
Brooch shapes cut with my die cutting machine.

The group had a choice of various interfacings to iron onto the back of their samples to make them firmer. We used Decovil 1 and Decovil 1 light for the book covers and the stiffer S!33 for the jewelery. If you just want to stitch not your newspaper samples, by hand or machine -  I recommend the medium weight iron-on interfacing F220. It helps stop the paper from tearing as you stitch. Art Van Go stock all the interfacings I use as well all the gilding flake and paints . . . and . . .

***

Tomorrow I will be off to teach the Eastern Region Embroiderers Guild Residential Weekend at Belsey Bridge Conference Centre in Suffolk. 
I am one of three tutors teaching this weekend, and one of the other two is my dear matey Wendy Dolan. What a treat to be able to spend some time with her. We will be driving from Brighton the Confecne Cente together - a great chance for a catch up and to find out how well her new book is doing - very well I am sure.
Watch this space for how we all got on . . .

***

nid-noi.com has now stopped trading, but I am still packing and sending out the orders I received before the website closed. There were rather a lot!!!! I hope to get most of them out today.

Lots to do.

x

Comments

  1. whyducks3 September 2015 at 15:19

    Looks like a wonderful class, wish I had been there. Enjoy your new beginnings.

    ReplyDelete

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