A girl needs a certain kind of sustenance when doing the shows . . . . . Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch was brilliant - busy - but brilliant. I didn't get a lot of chance to see all of the show but what I did see was fantastic.  The exhibit I liked the best was Barkcloth to Artcloth - it was remarkable. A collaboration between Textile artist Bobby Britnell and Shoe designer Janet Middleton using traditional Barkcloth material from Uganda and re-inventing this wonderful fabric and creating little shoes. The idea was for textile artists to decorate a piece of barkcloth in their own style and Janet was to make a small pair of shoes from it. This exhibition has been created to raise awareness and funds for Hands up for Uganda. www.handsupforuganda.org A project that was started by Bobby ad her family that has just grown and grown, what everyone had achieved is quite fantastic.   The shoes will also be exhibited at the Excel show 3rd - 5th A...

 The lovely Laura Strutt polishing off 2 puddings - no not really - we shared.  I have found a fellow dessert lover!!! Whoopppee! The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace was amazing, very busy indeed. I have a new job - promoting Vilene products at various shows around the country. As you can imagine, it is a great hardship - not!!! I have been working with these fabulous products for many years as many of you will know. Laura Strutt and I will be doing all the Twisted Thread shows for the next few years and one or two others .Laura is a very clever girl and is into all manner of crafts as well as working on magazines and is the author of the Haynes Sewing Manual. We get on SOOOOO well together. Whilst the shows are hard work - great fun can also be had.  Laura showing how to use the Quickscreen Triangle by Vilene. The whole point of us having a stand at the shows is to help you all identify which Vilene products you may need for your area of...

Busy girls on the workshop. Sorry this is a bit late in co ming - it's been a bit of a busy week. The sec o nd w o rkshop I taught was Hot New S urfaces. It was a four hour ex p erimental workshop playing with the all the weights and colours of Vilene S punbond. The group were very keen and got stuck in straight away. We worked with layers first. A pplying painted B ondaweb onto Spunbond and then decor ating it and then zapping it. They loved the gilding flake - I don't think many of the group had seen it before.   Spunbond decorated with p ainted Bondaweb and then zapped. They were happy to play and not make anything finished. It was great fun teaching this group, they were so keen and had not had a chance to play with these products before. We were using fro m the heaviest to the lightest - CS800, CS700 and CS500. The CS500 comes in seven colours as well as white. You can see the full range here -   https://www.nid-noi.com/product/LU.php  T ...