Strips of transfer printed fabric bonded onto a background and free machine stitched. Happy New Year everyone!!!  I hope you are all well and feeling suitably rested?? Ha Ha !! Maybe not - but hopefully you all enjoyed the break - those of you that had one.  I taught the 7th session of Experimental Textiles at The Old Needle Works over the weekend. We looked at using metal on Saturday and painted Bondaweb and Tyvek on the Sunday. It was just the weekend group this time - The Thursday/Friday group will have 2 sessions in February, we thought it was a bit much for them to have a session on the 1st and 2nd of January!!! The weekend was a 'students choice'. There are 2 sessions within the 9 when the students can negotiate what they would like to do/learn.    Lots of excitement and laughter as the group arrive - they haven't seen each other since November.    Mary kindly brought in fruit - rather cake . . .  Once the girls had se...

  Don't you love copper?  Well here we are, Christmas is gone and the New Year is looming - have you finished doing the washing up yet? I finished all the glasses this morning so now my kitchen is clear - Hurrah! I am slowly catching up with what I got up to in November.  The 7th weekend of my Experimental Textiles course is a students choice. The group can negotiate which techniques they want to play with or they can use it as chance to catch up with their folders. Jamie Malden from Colouricious kindly made this video for me at the Harrogate show to give you all some idea of what we cover on the course.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vwcwmHjv8  (you can skip the advert at the beginning) Experimental Textiles teaches you all the basic techniques and skills that you need when working in textiles. None of my 'Hot Textiles' techniques are included in the course - They are fun but can be learned from books and videos...

 A lovely little bowl that is a work in progress . . . .  I had forgotten how much I enjoy incorporating metal into textiles - so much so I will be teaching a new four day Metal Works? workshop at The Old Needle Works next Easter. Of course it helps to have students that have enquiring minds and enjoy experimenting. We worked with metal shims, knitted copper and metal mesh, mostly copper and brass. We tried embossing and punching out shapes as well as heat distressing to change the colour. We used a heat gun for this. My heat guns are 350 watt and are hot enough to colour copper. Anyone who has been on any of my workshops will know that I don't advocate using a naked flame.  I have had a selection of alcohol inks in a box for a about three years waiting for 'when I have a minute'!!! This was a great chance to use them to colour the metals. I also demonstrated transferring transfer painted papers on to the metal but that really needs to be saved til our next session...