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...

  A very colourful and musical sample of faux chenille. Isn't it amazing when something you have been planning for for a couple of years finally arrives? And then all of a sudden - it's over!!! It's my second to last night in The Antipodes. I am at my motel in Wanaka having had a lovely, lazy day mooching around. The most important part of the day was packing a parcel and sending it back home full of clothes . . .  My suitcase is a tad over weight, not unlike my good self!! I arrived in Wanaka last Sunday having been given a lift from one of the students that had enrolled on my course. We had a very beautiful drive up from Dunedin. . . and then it was straight into setting my room to teach on Monday.    More faux chenille samples. The five day workshop I was due to teach was A New Starting Point. My newspaper based course. It is very odd teaching without a Volvo estate full of my kit. I have to rely on my students bringing everything in - and the odd i...

   A finished brooch. Decorated , layered newspaper ironed on to S133 (heavy iron-on interfacing) and cut with a die cutting machine. My first workshop at Nadelwelt was a newspaper based one - the idea was to make brooches and bags or boxes. The workshop was for four hour s . I had pre-painted Bondaweb and dyed up loads of newspaper as we wouldn't have time for the students to paint anything and have time for it to dry. As it happens it was VERY hot on the day - 28 degrees. So we could have painted Bondaweb, but there was no way of knowing that in advance.    There were nine stude nts in the group - the lady on the left looking into the room was my Quilt Angel, she translated and helped me during the workshop. S he was great fun - we had a really good time with her. So - you know the drill by now - we layered painted Bondaweb with newspaper, gilding flake and glitter. T he group also had a go with transfer foils. T here is somet hing a...