One of the many beautiful views from Foredown Tower  So . . .  onto part 2.   A New Starting Point includes making faux chenille with newspaper. The group layered eight sheets of A4 newspaper with polyester organza. Using contrasting colours of paper and organza can create some very colourful samples. The layers of newspaper need to have some support otherwise your work will fall apart. Adding a sew-in interfacing such as classic pelmet Vilene (S80/239) or the 'pelmet Vilene light' to the back of your work - Vilene interfacings will re enforce your work. Once you have stacked your layers up you then machine stitch 'tramlines' across the whole sample, your 'channels' need to be at least 1/2 inch apart. If the 'channels' are too close together you wont be able get your scissors down the 'channels' to cut them.   Another tip when stitching newspaper faux chenille is to use a long stitch, the longest your machine will do - usually no ...

   Decorated black sew-in interfacing and coloured CS500 ironed onto Bondaweb then shapes were cut with a soldering iron. The shapes were then ironed onto another piece of CS500. Well that was a great weekend. The group produce d some fabulous samples. I'm go ing to split this post into 2 as there are too may images for one post. I will post the next part tomorrow.   The thing to remember with most of my workshops is that you don't create a finished piece of work. The idea i s for the students to experiment with whichever products we are working with to help them generate their own ideas. Designing through process is an impo rtant part of my teaching and indeed my own work.   Some scrummy experi ments with different weights of Tyvek.     After expe rimenting with the T yvek we went onto working with painted Bondaweb and dec orated the black p elmet Vilene light. This is a great weight to cut with a solder...

 The ever popular newspaper faux chenille wrapped into a dinky little vessel. This is going to be rather a long post, I haven't been able to get internet access for a while so I am still catching up. Tomorrow is the last day of teaching in The Blue Mountains and I haven't finished raving about last week yet . . . . The course at Ballarat was 3d based, we used several different types of interfacing, both sew-in and iron-on. The classic pelmet Vilene sew-in interfacing was used as a support for the newspaper faux chenille. It helps stop you cutting right through the final layer.    This lovely sample of newspaper faux chenille just used black, white, red and silver and looked stunning    This rather fab piece of newspaper faux chenille was mounted on an old rusty dustbin lid that was found lurking around . . .  This was originally one piece of faux chenille that was cut into six and then turned to create the above   ...