One of the fab samples from one of my workshops at Excel. The Stitching, Sewing and Hobbycrafts Show at Excel was splendid. It was very busy. I haven't seen a show that consistently busy every day for a long time. It was interesting to see and meet so many new visitors. Roughly half of the visitors were aware of the more experimental side of textiles and the other half were well informed. It was a fascinating mix - I have never known this before and I have done a lot of shows.  Apart from having my own stand, I also ran The Vilene Workshop as I did the previous weekend at the NEC. At this show the tutors were, myself, Fran Holmes, Tina Francis, Jayne Routley and Wendy Dolan.  I was given extra space for a small part of the end of the year show of Experimental Textiles that was at the NEC the previous weekend. It was very well received and I had several enquiries about enrolments. Some of my students work on my stand. Getting my stand ready, this is Jayne

 The tutors had a short bus ride to the symposium every morning - we decided the group name for a gathering tutors should be a cacophony.  Can you imagine why?  The Quilt Symposium 2015 Palmerston North was a brilliant event. I have never been part of something so large and so very well organised. It was VERY impressive. I taught 5 one day workshops. All my workshops were full which was very satisfying - you never quite know when you are an international tutor, has anyone heard of you?  The first workshop was A New Starting Point which I wrote about in the previous post.  So - to continue . . . . The second workshop was Transforming Transfer. We had great fun painting papers with disperse dye (transfer paint) and then transferring the designs onto synthetic fabric. You can achieve fabulous layered effects with this process.  Some of the group getting stuck into painting the disperse dye (transfer paint) onto paper ready to transfer onto synthetic fabric.  Playing

A large skeleton leaf bonded onto a black background. The leaf then had painted Bondaweb ironed onto it which was then foiled. Just FAB! What a fabulous time I had in Canberra. I was so well looked after - in fact spoilt by my host Robyn Duncan, I didn't really want to leave. My first workshop was On the Surface - my basic one day Bondaweb workshop or Vliesofix as it is called over here. We had great fun painting and decorating the Bondaweb. The group worked hard and produced some excellent samples. We also dabbled with newspaper - it had to happen. Here are a few of the samples, using threads, paper and transfer foils. * The next workshop was a 2 day version of Creating Original Designs ad Making Printing Blocks. We started with the students painting a journey. Regular readers will be familiar with this by now. Then we did an 'expanded' and a 'flipped out' exercise. This way the group have 3 opportunities for taking sections with