The beginning of the day. Early Saturday morning saw me driving to Newbury for a one day workshop that had been postponed due to family illness. As you may know, I have stopped taking bookings for one day workshops. I am just too old now for all the loading and unloading involved. The workshop was Scrumptious Spunbond (Lutradur). The car was loaded with all kind of goodies - Yes! I know, I don't do myself any favours.  There was plenty of help on hand to unload the car, with my poor old knee I need all the help I can get at the moment.  It always amazes that from an empty room we can create a space in which to play. It was a great hall, with plenty of sockets, always important with my workshops. Painting up the Bondaweb and the Spunbond. We got straight down to painting the Bondaweb and Spunbond as we needed it dry for after lunch.  The mornings activity was to try cutting out shapes from the sadly discontinued CS500 in colours with a soldering iron. Bondaweb wa

    Vilene Spunbond CS500 and polyester organza decorated with painted Bondaweb then zapped with a heat gun and ripped apart. Hot, New Jewelled Surfaces was the workshop and it was a local group for a change - Context. A great group of ladies - we had 14 for the workshop. The main idea of the workshop is to teach the safe use of heat tools. Irons, heat guns and soldering irons while having a thoroughly good time  The group getting down to work with the painted Bondaweb.     Busy girls and a very busy table . . .      Oh dear - there were some absolutely delicious cakes.MMmmmmm!! We were working with painted Bondaweb and Vilene Spunbond/Lutradur and of course all manner of sparkles. The group really enjoyed cutting out shapes with a soldering iron. This process is basically cutting shapes for bonded applique. In this case, as we are using synthetic fabrics, once the Bondaweb has been applied to the back of the fabric (leaving the backing paper on). shapes can v

   Maureen's fabulous layered and zapped Tyvek sample. Denman College is a great place to teach, it is the home of the W.I. and the teaching facilities are superb as is the food and the accommodation. They offer a variety of courses throughout the year. It's always worth seeing what they have to offer. The grounds and gardens are very beautiful, at any time of the year. www.denman.org.uk  We were a select group, just five students, which meant we could cover more ground during the workshop. My Hot Textiles workshop covers most of the techniques in my book of the same name - and a few more. Tyvek really got the groups attention and they had a good time trying out all the ways to distress and texture it. Here are some of the samples -                   In the photos below you can get an idea of how light and airy the textiles studio is . .     Maureen is on the left and Jessica is on the right . . . .     . . then from the left there was F