Who'd have thought - from a pile of paper and painted Bondaweb . . . . I have just got home from three days at West Dean College a fabulous place to teach and a wonderful place to be a student. The grounds and gardens are stunning, the house is beautiful and the workshops are purpose built, great for accommodating any kind of workshop. The workshop was Reclaimed Textiles -paper, print and free machine embroidery. The workshops are very spacious. A stack of painted and colourwashed papers. We started by colour washing all kinds of papers - newspapers, old books, atlases . . .  and painting up Bondaweb. The group then launched into my 'prettys and backgrounds' technique where the papers are torn and layered several times with the painted Bondaweb. The use of sparkle was optional for a change.    Lots of luscious layers. The torn layered backgrounds were then used as background for print and stitch. Just some of S

The view from the workshop door - one of my favourite views. West Dean College has got be one of the best places to teach in the U.K. The grounds are beautiful, the gardens are varied and colourful, the teaching areas are excellent and the food is - just fabulous!  East Sussex Embroiderers Guild hold their Summer School there every year. I was lucky to be asked to teach this year. Sophie Long was the other tutor. Her goldwork is very modern while still being traditional. We had great fun - we were a small group of six - I think I have taught all the other member of the Guild in this area of the country over the past ten years. I had been asked for a three dimensional slant on my newspaper based workshop - A New Starting Point. So I took my die cutting machine along to cut the boxes and brooch blanks. Some of the group painting up their papers and old books. The group brought in a great selection of foreign language newspapers, old atlases, technical and childrens

  A collage created from a section of 'The Journey' by Helen Fallowfield.   Helen finished the four year version of Experimental Textilesten years       ago  - and still refers to her design sources from the course as inspiration for current work. I am teaching this design workshop at Art Van Go June 1th and 11th - see below. Hello everyone - Happy Friday! I am not teaching many workshops this year as I am doing so many shows. Many of you are not used to going onto my diary either on this blog or my website to see where and when I am teaching, so this post may help. I am teaching at a new venue in Brighton, the first weekend is in July - there may be more to follow if we can sort out dates.  Have a read and see if there is anything you fancy - there are at least two places left on all the courses at the time of writing this post. I hope to see some of you soon. Any questions? - email me - info@kimthittichai.com Here are some images from last years Creating Origin