Alison brought in a very delicious rhubarb and ginger cake.  We didn't have a knife to cut the cake, so we used my 24"steel ruler - well, you do have to be adaptable!!  ExTeXtra is a group of 8 students from past Experimental Textiles courses, affectionately known as ExTex. We are now running ExTex4 and I am currently sorting the dates for ExTex5 which will start June 2016. The name ExTeXtra will probably change as the group work together and start to book their own exhibitions. This newly formed group will have have 4 more weekends together at The Old Needle Works in the IDC studios between now and March 2016. The group are learning to negotiate between themselves and me to decide what we will be doing, discussing and working on during this time. I am now mentoring this group and guiding them as well as teaching any techniques, skills they think they need.  Playing with white cartridge paper and staples, having a look at 3D. It had b...

One of Val's samples from the 'Backgrounds and Pretties' technique. Session 8 of Experimental Textiles is a student choice. The groups negotiate with me what they would like to do - I become their resource.  Half of the Thursday/Friday group wanted to catch up with workbooks and the other half wanted to try my 'backgrounds and pretties' technique. The Saturday/Sunday group just wanted do the 'backgrounds and pretties'. But first it was time to look at the homework - this takes longer every session. It is a great opportunity for the groups to discuss the work with each other. We had a great laugh when Kate brought in 'It'. We have christened it 'It' as we already have a 'Thing' by Rachael. 'It' by Kate. 'It' started life as a weaving supported on chicken wire that became rounded at Kate worked on it. She decided to make the piece totally enclosed and started to stitch into 'It'. 'It...

  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...