My lovely groups work on show. Here I am again - finally!! There is little available wifi while I am traveling so this is a bit late and rather short, as I am still having problems getting photos the right size for the blog. I will get there in the end . . . .  So - we had a wonderful week at Ballarat - lots of fun and great times with good friends. The end of week show was a roaring success showing off the stunning work all the groups had produced. This is my groups work. They didn't get a lot of chance to finish anything as it was a workshop of 2 halves - the first 3 days was spent creating original designs and printing blocks - the last 2 days was spent tearing and layering pages form old books and newspapers and painted Bondaweb to print onto with their new printing blocks.  Here you can see the Journeys and some of the printing blocks and prints . . .  Some of the papers and more considered pieces . . . . and a bit more . . . .  ...

Katie painting her Journey. So - Here I am back at Ballarat with Fibre Arts Australia run by Glenys Mann. www.fibrearts.jigsy.com I love teaching here and most especially catching up with great friends that I have taught with here two and four years ago - Mary Hettmanspurger and Kerr Grabowski from the USA and Marlene Kranz from Australia.  My design workshops have been asked for most particularly in Australia and as they are a great favourite of mine, this is no hardship.  You will have seen that I taught something similar in Canberra. As this is a five day workshop we will be developing the use of the print blocks and creating layered newspaper surfaces to print and stitch onto. The Journeys were painted . . . .  . . . and hung . . . We also played with 'flipping out' . . . .    . . .  and expanding . . .     The group then took two sections from each design exercise using 'L' shapes to isolate...

Emmaline and Rose The Crafty Cafe is one of the businesses at The Old Needle Works in Redditch. It is a great place to meet friends and when I am teaching Experimental Textiles we always have our lunch in there. Joan and Sharon are very funny and fabulous hosts - they make wonderful cakes and sandwiches and you can choose your own tea pot and cup and saucer from a display on the dresser. It really is all very civilised. When I was there last weekend Michelle Edinburgh was running a sock monkey class in the cafe.  A happy group creating gorgeous monkeys. Michelle is an art therapist and uses the making of sock monkeys as part of the therapy - however the class in the cafe was purely for the joy of making monkeys. Any kind of sock can used. The decoration is always the fun part, deciding what kind of hair and eyes. Do you use buttons or beads? Decsions, Descions . . . . I love the spots and stripes that are being used. The creature on the le...

Layered newspaper decorated with painted Bondaweb and then printed onto. I can finally let you all know that I will be teaching for Fibrearts Australia at Ballarat again next year. I had to wait until it was announced this week. The website is now live and enrolments have started - so for those of you who are interested - fibrearts.jigsy.com/fibre-arts-at-ballarat-2014 This five day workshop will combine all that I love - basic design, creating your own printing blocks and making gorgeous newspaper surfaces to print and stitch onto. It will be the last time I teach at Ballarat for a while as I will running the Vilene Workshop at Excel in London as part of Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at that time of year in future. A journey of inspiration with Kim Thittichai A workshop of two halves – Suitable for any level of experience. The first half will involve creating your own inspirational journey. Painting an imaginary journey with various width paintbrushes,...

 The ever popular newspaper faux chenille wrapped into a dinky little vessel. This is going to be rather a long post, I haven't been able to get internet access for a while so I am still catching up. Tomorrow is the last day of teaching in The Blue Mountains and I haven't finished raving about last week yet . . . . The course at Ballarat was 3d based, we used several different types of interfacing, both sew-in and iron-on. The classic pelmet Vilene sew-in interfacing was used as a support for the newspaper faux chenille. It helps stop you cutting right through the final layer.    This lovely sample of newspaper faux chenille just used black, white, red and silver and looked stunning    This rather fab piece of newspaper faux chenille was mounted on an old rusty dustbin lid that was found lurking around . . .  This was originally one piece of faux chenille that was cut into six and then turned to create the above   ...