Work in progress from Kate. Well - that's the third year of Experimental Textiles (the 9 month version) finished. The next round runs from June 2015 - March 2016. I love teaching the course in the IDC studios at The Old Needleworks in Redditch. It is a great venue, in the centre of the country and just off several major routes. There are several hotels close by for those of you that need to stay over.  The one thing I don't enjoy at the end of the course - is the students leaving. However - there will now be a way of progressing on from Experimental Textiles, a student can be invited to join ExTeXtra. This will be run as an exhibiting group with me as a mentor. It will be run as a 5 weekend course running from July 2015 - March 2016. It is my hope it will continue after March next year - but we will have to see what happens, this is all very new.    I am showing you details of the work in progress, I don't want to show the work or there will be no surprises...

 A lovely concoction of natural fibres and hand stitch. I am slowly catching up with my life - and this blog. I still have a load of emails to reply to, including yours Diana. I hope to catch up with a lot while I am up here at the the show.  Chris and Laura mucking about as we set up the stand. On this Valentines evening I am laying on my bed at my lovely guest house that we stay in when we do a show at the NEC. Laura, The other Vilene consultant, is in the room next door. We both manged to get up here despite the M40 and M1 being closed. We have set up the stand and have sorted all the materials we need for our 3 workshops. The show is Craft, Hobby and Stitch International, it's a trade show. I work with Vilene and run their retailer workshops. I am struggling with my knee at the moment, Laura is being a star and helping her old mate with the lifting and the carrying. I will write more about the show next week - now on with this post. I have sp...

One of Sarah's layered samples to show the students the kind of thing she was after! You may remember a post from the 8th of June last year where I told you about the amazing work that Sarah Patterson and her students were doing at Portsmouth College. They had created a range of fabulous dresses out of bin liners based on 'The Little Black Dress' or 'LBD' here is the link if you missed it - LBD - Hot Stuff Sarah and her students have exhibited the collection several times and have now created something new - and they will be exhibiting it all on stand no N16 at Fashion. Embroidery and Stitch next week. The work is based around Brighton .  Little felt maps of areas of Brighton a detail  experiments with synthetic fabrics, stitch and a soldering iron  a beautifully observed stitched sketch of the Royal Pavilion on layers of net and felt a simple experiment with layers and stitch - FAB!   These stunning headpieces will also ...