The cover of Patchwork Professional Magazine You can just picture it can't you - me sitting here at my computer in my bathrobe writing this with blue dye on my hair being incredibly excited about my second article to be published in a magazine - I feel so grown up!!! Patchwork Professional is a very beautiful German magazine the promotes all kinds of quilt art and associated textile techniques and skills. This issue has featured me as an artist and a workshop on how to use my lovely Hot Spots!   I have been given permission to scan in the cover of the magazine and two of the pages from the article. As they are scans they are not perfect but the images give you some idea. The shaggy newspaper pieces and the 'Blue Cross' image are based on the detritus that gets caught up in the steel work under our West Pier in Brighton. The 4 foot vessel on the right is one of my pieces created from CS800 that has been dyed, zapped and layered. The top image ...

 My new black (well charcoal really) pelmet/craft Vilene decorated with painted Bondaweb, foils and gilding flake and then cut with a soldering iron and bonded onto the same black pelmet/craft Vilene. FAB!  ooooohh!!! It's chilly! Have you got snow too? This is the third year in a row we have snow in Brighton - most unusual. We also had snow at Bluewater so Sunday was a very quiet day . The first three days were fabulous though. None of us were sure if anyone would come to the show as it was a new venue, but we needn't have worried - you all came in your droves. Thank you! It was great to see so many of you there and you seemed to be having a great time. It was fabulous meeting you all and catching up with friends who also had stands at the show. As it was a bit quiet yesterday I had the chance to play with some of my new products that I will launching on the website in a couple of weeks time. I am just having them cut and priced then I can let you all know what I...

 Layers of newspaper and polyester organza stitched together and slashed and distressed to create faux chenille. One of the things we did on the first day of this course was to paint newspaper with procion dye. Normally I would use the newspaper that I have used over and over again when protecting my work surface. If you can build up the colour over time you get a wonderfully random effect of splodges of paint and dye. We didn't have that luxury of time so just had to make do with one coat of dye. Several layers of newspaper and polyester organza machine (we used 8 of each) stitched together in 'tram lines' the width of your machine foot or slightly wider. You then cut through the top layers but NOT the bottom layer. I add a piece of dyed craft/pelmet Vilene as the bottom layer before I stitch all the layers together. This reinforces your work as newspaper is very fragile. The craft/pelmet Vilene also make your work firm enough for book covers or vessels. ...

  Newspaper block printed with Colourful Thoughts multi surface paints (bubblegum & copper) I had a day off yesterday - Shock! Horror!! I had chance to work on a large piece of newspaper faux chenille - Oh no!!! not newspaper AGAIN you cry!!! Colourful Thoughts multi surface paints are thick enough to print with and can be watered down to paint Bondaweb and Tyvek and they are gorgeous. craftynotions I have a deep box canvas 1m x .30cm I wanted to cover so layered up 7 - 9 layers of old dyed newspapers and backed it with some dyed craft/pelmet Vilene. My finished layers were large enough to cover the canvas and stick down around the edges. I have new wooden printing block I wanted to try out that Sarah Lawrence had given me at Festival of Quilts. I printed the top layer of newspaper, waited for it to dry then pinned all the layers together ready to stitch. I wanted to try stitching wider channel than I have been to see if I liked the effect. The channels are 2...

Following swiftly on from Shropshire the day before - I delivered a 2 day workshop - Extreme Surfaces for Stitch at InkBerrow Design Centre  We had great fun layering Vilene Spunbond backed with Bondaweb and stitched onto craft Vilene . I love teaching at this venue - the workshops are perfect for my classes. Layers of dyed Vilene Spunbond machine stitched onto dyed craft Vilene and then zapped back with a heat gun.   These beautiful samples were created by my youngest student ever - pre dyed Vilene Spunbond CS500 (yellow) had Bondaweb ironed onto the back and shapes were cut out with a soldering iron. The backing paper was then removed and the negative spaces (yellow) were then ironed onto the the black and blue backgrounds, more pre dyed CS500. Simple and exquisite! Pre dyed CS500 decorated with painted Bondaweb, sequins and glitter. This was then 'cut' into wavy strips and layered up to create a 'frothy' effect. T...

 old painted and dyed newspaper layered with polyester organza Well who would have thought that old newspapers would cause such a stir??? I have had several emails and a couple of comments about yesterdays blog. All asking for more images of the faux chenille - so here you are my lovelies. Faux chenille is a technique I taught on Experimental Textiles. Experimental Textiles was a four year course that I wrote and taught for 10 years and stopped teaching a couple of years ago. I will be teaching a shortened version starting next May in Redditch, for more details go to - http://inkberrowdesigncentre.co.uk/node/1471 There are many tutorials on the Internet and more usually using natural fabric, but basically you layer at least 6 layers of Fabric/Newspaper, stitch tramlines or channels down the entire piece and then cut through the top 5 layers making sure you DON'T cut through the bottom layer. Easier said than done with newspaper. I back mine with dyed craft/pelmet Vilene. You...

6 of the 7 lovely ladies on my course last week enjoying the sunshine on the terrace at West Dean As the title of the course suggests I wanted to incorporate design exercises into this 4 day workshop which may then lead onto more considered samples as we worked through the 'Hot Textiles' processes. Here a few of the exercises the students worked through on the first day. * We then worked through most of the 'Hot Textiles' techniques, half the group had never painted Bondaweb so we started with that. This lovely sample was decorated with the background paper from the Bondaweb. These 2 samples were created with Vilene Spunbond and pelmet/craft Vilene with Bondaweb on the back, cut with a soldering iron and ironed onto more pelmet/craft Vilene.    75 gm Tyvek layered with polyester organza,machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun.   Layers of polyester organza machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun These wonderful Tyvek...