Just in case you thought I was slacking . . .  So - we have had a busy two days at Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch and.the weather doesn't seem to have put the visitors off, which is great. A huge effort goes into putting on this show and it would be a great shame if it wasn't seen by thousands. My Experimental Textiles students are showing their course work and some finished pieces alongside the catwalk. The ten metre stand is bursting with energy. I am so proud of my girls, they have done me proud. They have been taking it in turns to steward the stand and they are enjoying talking to the visitors and explaining what we get up to on the course.     Beginning to sort the hanging order. . . .      The finished exhibition.    A closer look at the design exercises the students use to take sections from to create printing blocks.    Some of the finished work and more considered samples.   ...

 One of Tracey's stitched samples using torn prints from the 2nd week-end We all had a very colourful and exhausting week-end on the 3rd week-end of Experimental Textiles at The Old Needleworks in Redditch.  We started off looking at what the group had done for home work. Part of it was to stitch into some of their prints from the previous week-end. The three images below are just a sample.      The next thing we did was to colour wash their sketch books with procion dye powder and water. You can paint all the pages in the sketch at once and wait for the sketch book to dry (it takes ages) and then you can peel the pages apart. You can't do this with paint or ink as the pages would stick together. It gives you great backgrounds on which to add any notes or samples and is much less terrifying than being faced by a book of pristine white pages. The ExTex girls painting their sketchbooks - having great fun splashing all the...