A splendid sparkly sample. So - that's The NEC done and dusted, at least until August anyway. The Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch Show was great fun and was very busy. I have various roles at the show, it is my busiest show of the year. One of my roles is to run the Vilene Workshop. 5 x 45 minute workshops a day with 5 different tutors. This year it was Lynda Monk, me, Fran Holmes, Tina Francis and Jayne Routley. One of my workshops getting under way. The workshops are free and are always popular. I will be running similar workshops at Excel from Friday - www.fashionembroidery.co.uk/london/workshops. I will also be giving a lecture every day. These are some of the samples the ladies produced in 45 minutes. Lots of sparkle and twinkle on painted Bondaweb. My workshop is 'Sparkle and Twinkle' , using all manner of sparkle and transfer foils on painted Bondaweb. This process makes fabulous surfaces for stitch. The other tutors had sta

  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

A fabulous print by Muriel. I had forgotten just how beautiful Jersey is - and what weather we had - my goodness it was wonderful. Not that we saw an awful lot of the sun as we were tucked away teaching, but it does lift the soul. The Jersey Textile Showcase has become a very large event with something like 40 workshops over the seven days. I met new tutors and several tutors I knew but hadn't spent much time with. www.theharbourgalleryjersey.com      The view from my bedroom window. The tutors all stayed in a B & B called The Harbour View and it certainly lived up to it's name. Lovely clean and modern rooms and a remarkable breakfast. If you ever need to find somewhere to stay on the island - I can't recommend this enough . www.harbourviewjersey.com So - to the workshops. My first one was Transforming Transfers. We had 20 in the group - luckily I had taken my heat press with me. We painted disperse dye (transfer paint) onto paper. W