Work in progress from Kate. Well - that's the third year of Experimental Textiles (the 9 month version) finished. The next round runs from June 2015 - March 2016. I love teaching the course in the IDC studios at The Old Needleworks in Redditch. It is a great venue, in the centre of the country and just off several major routes. There are several hotels close by for those of you that need to stay over.  The one thing I don't enjoy at the end of the course - is the students leaving. However - there will now be a way of progressing on from Experimental Textiles, a student can be invited to join ExTeXtra. This will be run as an exhibiting group with me as a mentor. It will be run as a 5 weekend course running from July 2015 - March 2016. It is my hope it will continue after March next year - but we will have to see what happens, this is all very new.    I am showing you details of the work in progress, I don't want to show the work or there will be no surprises w

One of Val's samples from the 'Backgrounds and Pretties' technique. Session 8 of Experimental Textiles is a student choice. The groups negotiate with me what they would like to do - I become their resource.  Half of the Thursday/Friday group wanted to catch up with workbooks and the other half wanted to try my 'backgrounds and pretties' technique. The Saturday/Sunday group just wanted do the 'backgrounds and pretties'. But first it was time to look at the homework - this takes longer every session. It is a great opportunity for the groups to discuss the work with each other. We had a great laugh when Kate brought in 'It'. We have christened it 'It' as we already have a 'Thing' by Rachael. 'It' by Kate. 'It' started life as a weaving supported on chicken wire that became rounded at Kate worked on it. She decided to make the piece totally enclosed and started to stitch into 'It'. 'It&

  A cake and flowers for my birthday.   . . . and then another cake . . . !!! We are now over halfway through Experimental Textiles, this session was the sixth of nine. I have only ever taught one group at a time before, this year we are running two groups - a Thursday/Friday and a Saturday/Sunday. We will be doing the same next year. It is very interesting teaching the two groups side by side - they are both strong and are producing some excellent work. One thing that I hadn't considered was the air of competition creeping in between the groups. It is light hearted - but very definitely there!!! One of the benefits of having two groups - when the tutor has a birthday - you get two cakes!!!  When we are all settled with coffee (and cake) first thing on day one of the session - we look at what has been done for home work produced to reinforce what did on the session before. On the previous session we had looked at constructed textiles - felt, knit and weave, and how