Jayni's completed Journey Jacket   Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the design exercise I created many years ago to help my students create original designs. I have taught The Journey exercise all over the world, and now with Zoom I am able to teach live workshops anywhere. I 'met' Janyi Bloch on a live Zoom workshop I was delivering for a textile group in Canada that she belonged to. It is amazing to be able to teach a group in real time, just in a different place. I know it will never replace face to face teaching, but it does save a long flight!! It is always interesting to see what students develop after a workshop, and very occasionally, a student just blows your mind!! When I saw what Jayni had created from her Journey exercise, I knew I had to share it far and wide. With Jayni's permission of course. Jayni's Journey exercise in her studio at home in Ontario.     2 sections from Jayni's Journey Painting the design onto fabric and then free mac...

    A lovely sample of the tearing and layering process that has been decorated with a print using one of the colours in the work. Using a 'self' colour paint enables the print to bleed in and out of the work and not be too obvious.  As we only had six in the group the students were able to spread out and we managed to get a lot more done. The larger the group the slower things happen. The group caught onto the 'background' and 'pretty' rotation quickly, sometimes it can take a while. It never ceases to amaze me how the simplest process can sometimes take the longest to understand. I think our brains like to make things complicated, they get bored when something is too simple. A few of the torn and layered backgrounds -         Pru added frayed fabric thread to this sample -    It add an extra texture - if you are aiming for a lot of texture - you need to keep the colours down to a low roar . . tones of one colour te...

The field opposite the tower. The second day started with a 'show and tell' of the work from yesterday. It was a surprising amount of work. We then got on with experimenting with Tyvek. I wanted to show the group how to raise the surface of a Bondaweb based piece of work. As Bondweb is ironed, it is flat, and sometimes you need extra texture. Small strips of Tyvek or Tyvek beads can help.  Introducing Tyvek might not have been my best plan . . .   I also mentioned how to make corsages . .  and they were off!!!! Not in the direction I was planning!!    Two of yesterdays Hot Spot! samples.  My plan for today had been for the group to have a quick play with Tyvek and then get on with a considered, stitched sample using painted Bondaweb - Huh!!! Fat chance!!    Olivia making several corsages at once.    Pip going into mass production.            As you can see, they...

Printed and painted Bondaweb lifted off the backing paper, torn and ironed into place onto a canvas decorated with more painted Bondaweb an old newspapers.  I have had a few days to play - a rare treat. I have been making samples for the new show at Excel next week and for my upcoming workshop at West Dean College. Solufleece and the new self adhesive Solufix are very popular at the moment. I thought you might like to know about printing onto Solufleece. Teaching across the country as I do it is very apparent that many of you are not confident in your drawing skills. A way around this is to use printing blocks, your own or commercial designs. As Solufleece is water soluble you would think that printing onto it with (wet) paint would make it dissolve - not if you stretch it first.  A selection of wooden blocks from Art Van Go www.artvango.co.uk    Boxes of blocks in many designs as well as single designs are available from Colouricious www.col...