Little birdies in the trees - nearly finished. Just needed the rest of birdies to be stuck on.  So - I have now caught up as far as May 6th at the Beads for Beauty studio in Babbacombe, run by Sylvia McCann and her ultra talented daughter Alison.    The studio at Beads for Beauty, Babbacombe. The teaching studio is fabulous, plenty of room with power to the tables - always good for me! Now You See It . . ! Is my machine embroidery workshop. I don't tend to teach machine embroidery courses, my friend Wendy Dolan ( www.wendydolan.co.uk) does it so well, and I don't want to stray onto another tutors 'patch'. The students colour a canvas with Inktense blocks or crayons ready for their machine embroidered shapes. I use the water soluble Solufleece for free machine embroidery, it is strong enough to stitch heavily without tearing, and washes away very efficiently. www.vlieseline.com If you stretch Solufleece in an embroidery frame, you can print ont...

Pieces of rust dyed fabrics painted with bees wax. Am playing catch up again. Am nearly there . . .  I had wonderful weekend with my ExTeXtra group. This group of 8 girls were on Experimental Textiles last year and we negotiated 5 weekends for me to mentor them. This was the 4th weekend - we have one more in February - then they will be gone . .  I will miss them terribly - they are a fabulous group of girls. I am tearing up now just thinking about it!!! The group have now started exhibiting as 'Out of Line', and they had their first exhibition at The West Country Quilt and Textile Show in Bristol in November. They showed a combination of their work from Experimental Textiles and work they have done since then - it was amazing to see all the photos. I was doing the show in Dublin so I couldn't get there. They had 2 x 8m x 3m stands to hang - a huge task. They coped magnificently. Out of Line will be exhibiting on the Inkberrow Design Centre stand at Fashion, ...

Newspaper decorated with painted Bondweb, silk fibres, glitter and transfer foil. On Saturday I drove over to Meopham in Kent to teach one of my last one day workshops. The workshop was Hot Textiles, working with Bondaweb, Tyvek and Lutrdur/Vilene Spunbond. As some of you will know, I no longer take bookings for one day workshops, you can never get enough done. This workshop was booked 18 months ago.  Having given a lecture to this group the previous Saturday in Gravesend, I knew I was in for a good day with plenty of fun and laughter.  We started off painting up the Tyvek, Bondaweb and Lutradur/Vilene Spunbond. When working with materials that distress with heat, it is important to know how to apply colour to them, most importantly, how thinly to apply the colour. If the paint is applied too thickly, the paint will form a barrier and form a resist to the heat.   The group painting up their products. The Tyvek is always the first to dry - so we we ...