2 rather splendid corsages. My last workshop for 2015 was at Art Van Go, an excellent way to end the year. Viv and Kevin and the team look after everyone so well. They run a very comprehensive workshop timetable. Here are the workshops for 2016 -  bit.ly/1IjvI4U    I have a new one in August, Sticky and Shiny. Learning how to use all the glues and fusible webs with transfer foil. I think this is a long overdue workshop. Anyway - back to Making a Tyvek Box. As many of you will know, I rarely teach a workshop where students leave with something finished. teaching process is my passion. However, I thought it might be time to show how adaptable Tyvek can be and that students don't need to leave with just a bag of colourful, textured samples.   My Tyvek box sample.                   I took along the book Embroidered Boxes by Janet Edmonds. It has beautiful ideas for making boxes and has patterns for different styles of boxes with photocopying instructions. All of Janet&#

 A lovely little bowl that is a work in progress . . . .  I had forgotten how much I enjoy incorporating metal into textiles - so much so I will be teaching a new four day Metal Works? workshop at The Old Needle Works next Easter. Of course it helps to have students that have enquiring minds and enjoy experimenting. We worked with metal shims, knitted copper and metal mesh, mostly copper and brass. We tried embossing and punching out shapes as well as heat distressing to change the colour. We used a heat gun for this. My heat guns are 350 watt and are hot enough to colour copper. Anyone who has been on any of my workshops will know that I don't advocate using a naked flame.  I have had a selection of alcohol inks in a box for a about three years waiting for 'when I have a minute'!!! This was a great chance to use them to colour the metals. I also demonstrated transferring transfer painted papers on to the metal but that really needs to be saved til our next session w

  Jo's beautiful weaving sample.  This will be the first of two posts.   It may have been a little optimistic to think I could teach feltmaking, weaving, metal shim manipulation and finger knitting on one weekend and have the students develop a considered sample.  When you write a course and then break it down into the teaching hours, it works in your head - but not necessarily in practise. To be fair I knew all but one or two of the group had felted and woven before and we were only going spend the morning going over the principles of the processes. I didn't however take into consideration how the group would grab each process and devour it!! They are such a FAB group - up for anything and ready to get involved in anything I suggest. The idea of the weekend was to look at constructed textile processes ie weaving, felting and knitting and also look at constructed as in 3D. We ended up making small felt vessels/bowls in the morning as most of the group had made

 The 'crashed' newspaper, Bondaweb and Solufleece What! not MORE newspaper - Yep!!! I'm afraid so . . . . I have had a chance to catch up with some work and try some samples I have been wanting to play with. Today's task was to try 'crashing' newspaper with Solufleece. I do it all time with fabrics. (For step by step photos and full instructions go to the Solufleece page on www.nid-noi.com) To crash fabric or newspaper you need to layer from the bottom up -  1 layer of Solufleece,  2 layers of Bondaweb off the baking paper your top fabric/newspaper Layer everything up and stitch 'tram lines' about the width of the foot of your sewing machine apart through all 4 layers. You can experiment with different widths and maybe trying wavy lines once you have done your first sample. Being VERY careful not to burn yourself in your excitement - Steam your sample until it shrinks up or 'crashes'. This can be done wi