A different view! Nicola Brown walking around her property. Happy New Year!!  Wherever you are in the world, I hope 2022 is looking good for you. Well here we are! Are you ready? I have lots of plans for my field/garden and the making of new videos for a subscription opportunity on my website in a few months time.   I have a few events in the diary already. 10 live Zoom workshops the last Friday in every month starting this month. I have been asked to do 4 more live streams on the Vlieseline Facebook page in January, February April and May and I am giving a live Zoom lecture to a textile group in Portland, Oregon, USA in February. That is enough to be thinking about for a while, along with running the website, social media and working in the studio.     Beautiful book covers by Sharon on a recent workshop I so enjoyed teaching the live Zoom workshops last year. They were such fun, it was wonderful to be able to work alongside the students in real time. So I am doing it all over again

  Layers of Lutradur cut with a soldering iron by Joane from Montreal, Canada When you have taught for several, verging on many, years, you build a great collections of friends, as well as students. Some you see as regularly as time allows, others pop up now and again and the joy of seeing them is very special. I have had a few reunions in the past month on the workshops, making them extra special. This is an extra blog post as I wanted to showcase some of the amazing work created on the Zap Pow! Slash and 3D workshop. We worked with various weights of Lutradur using heat guns and soldering irons to create fabulous edges and shapes. A wonderful sample combining textured Lutradur and Tyvek decorated with painted melted glue by Frances in Montreal, Canada Pieces of zapped and soldered Lutradur and textured Tyvek   Squares of zapped Lutradur on a background of painted Bondaweb with wisps of wool tops. The long silver line is melted glue by Joane from Montreal, Canada Curved shapes cut out

 A very sensitive and subtle piece. This would make a beautiful cover for a tall night light/candle holder. You would just need to stitch a back seam to create a tube.  (Decovil 1 iron on interfacing, colourwashed with paper additions.) So, a busy week this week . . . .  Tuesday and Wednesday I was teaching a 2 day workshop at Art Van Go - Reclaimed Papers. It is great fun - you don't have to make anything that looks like anything - it is a great process. Just tearing and layering.  The group all cracking on. I love teaching at Art Van Go www.artvango.co.uk . It's a great space to teach in, plus I get to see Viv, Kevin and the team. This was my last workshop this year - and is was fabulous. The group worked really hard, and Viv and Kevin were on great form. Torn, painted newspapers torn and layered up with painted Bondaweb. This process is featured in my book Reclaimed Textiles - it's called 'Pretties and Background'. Once the pape

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