Just in case you thought I was slacking . . .  So - we have had a busy two days at Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch and.the weather doesn't seem to have put the visitors off, which is great. A huge effort goes into putting on this show and it would be a great shame if it wasn't seen by thousands. My Experimental Textiles students are showing their course work and some finished pieces alongside the catwalk. The ten metre stand is bursting with energy. I am so proud of my girls, they have done me proud. They have been taking it in turns to steward the stand and they are enjoying talking to the visitors and explaining what we get up to on the course.     Beginning to sort the hanging order. . . .      The finished exhibition.    A closer look at the design exercises the students use to take sections from to create printing blocks.    Some of the finished work and more considered samples.     . . . and more. The work on display is a very small sel

Chocolate wrappers free machine stitches with the help of Solufix and Solufleece. Oh how I suffer for my art!!! I love the bright, shiny colours of chocolate wrappers and enjoy using them as flashes of colour in my work. When ironed lightly between baking parchment they texture like Tyvek but remain soft enough to stitch into. They do ping about a bit if you try to free machine them but with the new Solufix I have no more trouble with them. Solufix is a self adhesive water soluble fabric on a strong backing paper that is removed to reveal the sticky side of the Solufix. Because the backing paper is so firm it means you can run it through an ink jet printer, print your design, remove the backing paper and then lay threads around your design and free machine to your hearts content. You may need to cover your threads with a layer of Solufleece if any of the glue is exposed. The glue will not affect your machine needle.    I stuck all my chocolate wrapper strips to the Solufix

Hot Textiles has been translated into Spanish - Whoo hoo! The journey home from Glasgow on Monday was a bit scary - well the first bit of it was anyway . . . .The M74 was very, very, frightening. One minute there was a reasonable amount of snowfall - The next, there was a whiteout. The traffic ground to a halt and we sat around for a while, an hour or so and then we started to move, slowly. With the ever useful travel information on the radio we were informed of an accident that had closed the motorway several miles ahead. We eventually diverted off the Southbound M74 via Lesmahagow, to return to a much faster moving M74. On the Northbound M74 there was a horrible accident involving two lorries and several cars. The scene certainly made me drive much more sensibly than usual . I delayed my journey home to Brighton as I heard on the travel news that the M23 was blocked with poor drivers stuck in the snow, most of them all night! Luckily my best fri

Even my fish sculpture is covered in snow. It started snowing last Friday at about 8am, by 9am I was in my local Asda supermarket, not so much panic buying as 'I'm going to be stuck in the house for a while' buying. I have lived in Brighton for thirty odd years now, and only in the last three winters have we had so much snow. It was unusual as we are close to the sea and apparently the salt in the air stops the snow - not any more . We had about five inches the first day and then three more inches the next day . Living on top of hill I get trapped as soon as the buses stop running up our road .  Having been caught out with very little food last year, as soon as it started to snow, I was off to do 'the big shop'. I was not alone - by 9.30am the queues were six people deep. It was like Christmas all over again. Everyone else obviously got stuck in their houses as well last year. We still have loads of snow but most of us in Brighton can get out and abou

  The Divine Ruth Issett and the very wonderful Susan Chapman larking about on the Art Van Go stand. Ruth was demonstrating on the Art Van Go stand on Saturday and Susan's stand was opposite.  The lovely Mr Mead from Art Van Go  www.artvango.co.uk - we all ate so much ice cream during the show - it was clotted cream ice cream with real fruit and candy floss . . and honeycomb . . and raspberry pavlova . . . . and chocolate . . . and lemon crunch . . .  and toffee fudge and so many more. Over the four days we did our best to get through the flavours by having two scoop cones. The vote down our end of the show was that the lemon crunch and honeycomb were the best. I will be teaching a 3 day workshop - The Journey, inspiration for art and design May 24th - 26th and another 3 day workshop  - A new starting point August 29th - 31st in their lovely studio. I will also be holding a mentoring day on the 1st September for any ex students who wish to spend the day d

Kathleen Laurel Sage's first experiment using a soldering iron with Vilene Spunbond CS500 - she has now developed a very exciting new workshop. This time next week we will be exhausted after the 3rd day of Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at the NEC. F,E and S as it is known, is one part of a three part show. It is the more creative and mad side of the show with all the college stands, the amazing fashion shows and of course - wonderful textile artists and the best traders. The two other parts of the show are Sewing for Pleasure which includes all the beautiful dressmaking side of textiles and then there is Hobbycrafts - all the traders you could possibly desire to supply your every need. There are free demonstrations and workshops and lectures and some stunning displays. It is going to be an amazing show . To find out more go to - http://www.ichf.co.uk/fashion/ I will be running the free workshops again on the Vilene Workshop stand no Y01. We have an exciting list