Chocolate wrappers free machine stitches with the help of Solufix and Solufleece. Oh how I suffer for my art!!! I love the bright, shiny colours of chocolate wrappers and enjoy using them as flashes of colour in my work. When ironed lightly between baking parchment they texture like Tyvek but remain soft enough to stitch into. They do ping about a bit if you try to free machine them but with the new Solufix I have no more trouble with them. Solufix is a self adhesive water soluble fabric on a strong backing paper that is removed to reveal the sticky side of the Solufix. Because the backing paper is so firm it means you can run it through an ink jet printer, print your design, remove the backing paper and then lay threads around your design and free machine to your hearts content. You may need to cover your threads with a layer of Solufleece if any of the glue is exposed. The glue will not affect your machine needle.    I stuck all my chocolate wrapper strips to the Solufix

Beach beauties Well I have finished my first teaching session - a 2 day workshop for the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria - Geelong Branch. We had great fun and got a lot of work done. The group were very helpful and so organised - they were a joy to work with. Geelong is the second largest city in the state of Victoria after Melbourne and is an hours drive from Melbourne. These bollards are a feature of the Eastern beach and are quite wonderful. There are over 100 in several groups depicting various aspects of Geelong life and many local dignitaries. for more images go to bollards  All the yachts lined up at the yacht club    The beautiful old seafarers mission is now a restaurant   x We had a fast paced workshop, I wanted to makes sure I showed as many of my techniques as possible - I am not here often!!!! The ladies coped well - even when I announced we would have exercises after lunch - they were game bunch. We worked through Tyvek, painted Bondawe

Beautiful textures and subtle neutral colours plus an interesting collection of shapes . Well the stands are up and we are nearly ready - Jayne and I will go in early tomorrow to finish off. We came back to our guest house at 3pm and we were both so tired we fell asleep. We have just got back from having dinner in the local pub and are now packing up product in our respective rooms. Jayne is cutting up CS500 Spunbond ready for her workshop tomorrow in her room and I am rolling up single metres of Lamifix in my room. It is an annoying job as the Lamifix sticks to itself but I sell a lot of it and it is a fab product, so it is worth it. I am very lucky that Jayne has been able to take time off work to help me on the stand this year, she is an ex student who has turned into a great friend - she knows what I am like - and she still speaks to me!!!! I couldn't have managed on my own, I am still very tired and trying to keep the neuralgia under control - I have never taken so ma

Painted Bondaweb ironed onto a turquoise background fabric, decorated with dried seeds and leaves, jewel dots and strips of the backing paper from the Bondaweb  The first day of this 3 day course was spent showing the students the basic layering techniques we were due to cover. Once the students have got to grips with the basics they can then start zapping and stitching or whatever they fancy. First of all we painted Bondaweb and Tyvek - The Bondaweb we started to work with today (as you will see) and the Tyvek will be played with tomorrow. While the Bondaweb was drying the students ironed some plain Bondaweb onto a piece of pre-coloured Vilene Spunbond CS500. A soldering iron was then used to cut out shapes which were the ironed onto a second piece of Spunbond. Here are some of their samples -         We then experimented with transfer printing onto white CS800 - the heaviest weight Spunbond. I have my heat press here so the students had the chance to try tr

  the mandarin tree outside the studio There are 2 studios at the Castanea villa one upstairs inside the villa and one out in the garden. My group and I were working in the garden studio, One of the greatest pleasures of the week (and there were many) was picking mandarins from the tree right out side the studio. MMMmmm!  I can taste them now - delicious. The very lovely Claire Muir, who is featured in this months Stitch magazine, was teaching at Castanea last month and her students very kindly left us some fruit in the middle of the tree . . . ! This is just a selection of the work that was produced last week and in no particular order. painted Bondaweb on black cotton with heat transfer foil   painted Bondaweb decorated with with snips of polyester organza and gold flake painted Bondaweb on dyed newspaper . layers of painted 75gm Tyvek and polyester organza machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun. The sample above was also attacked with  soldering iron faux