Fabulous painted newspaper and painted Bondaweb.  This is going to be a hit and run post - don't have much time as I am about to leave for Shropshire. So lots of photos and not many words. A five day summer school at Foredown Tower - New Layered Textiles. And it was definitely summer - pheeWWWWeee, very hot. We coped womanfully!!! There were ten lovely students which is the maximum for that teaching studio. We covered painted Bondweb on fabric and paper, Tyvek, newspaper faux chenille and cutting CS500 and 800 with a soldering iron and applying it to different back grounds. These images are a small selection of what we got up to -  Painted Bondaweb on fabric and newspaper and book covers              ] Newspaper faux chenille -     Painted Vilene Spunbond CS500 and 800 backed with unpainted Bondaweb, cut with a soldering iron and then applied either to fabric of more CS800.               I haven't added the Tyvek i

The fountain in the grounds with evening sunlight on the water. Denman College has very beautiful grounds. This is going to be a lengthy post, I don't have time to write two and split the images. You may remember my recent post about my lovely group at West Dean and my saying it is not often you get a group that gels so well and that you have a lot of fun with. Well I taught another such group this week. They were great fun and very naughty!!! There is something about the groups I teach at Denman College www.denman.org.uk   They all seem to get on with each other quickly. That means they relax more and then feel comfortable being naughty! We did have a lot of fun. The course was a three day 'New Layered Textiles' workshop and basically takes the students through the processes in my book Layered Textiles. The first thing we did was paint up all the products so we would be ready to get down to work with all the products ready to play with. As usual we started

 Layers of newspaper and polyester organza stitched together and slashed and distressed to create faux chenille. One of the things we did on the first day of this course was to paint newspaper with procion dye. Normally I would use the newspaper that I have used over and over again when protecting my work surface. If you can build up the colour over time you get a wonderfully random effect of splodges of paint and dye. We didn't have that luxury of time so just had to make do with one coat of dye. Several layers of newspaper and polyester organza machine (we used 8 of each) stitched together in 'tram lines' the width of your machine foot or slightly wider. You then cut through the top layers but NOT the bottom layer. I add a piece of dyed craft/pelmet Vilene as the bottom layer before I stitch all the layers together. This reinforces your work as newspaper is very fragile. The craft/pelmet Vilene also make your work firm enough for book covers or vessels.