A stunning corsage - one of the best I have seen on a workshop.    I had a great day today teaching at Southwick Community Centre for the Sussex Quilters. The workshop was 'Tinkering with Tyvek'. As usual for my workshops this was a process based day. I think it is important to know what the the materials will do before you can decide to make anything. First thing, we spent an hour painting both sides of several sheets of A4  heavy Tyvek and fabric weight Tyvek. Dull but necessary, it is very important not to paint the Tyvek with thick paint. If you do, the paint will form a barrier and the Tyvek won't react to heat. We then had a play with ironing Tyvek shapes between baking parchment, learning the 'Kiss, Stroke and Caress' way of lightly heating the Tyvek till it shrinks and puckers. We then moved on to layering 4 sheets of A4 Tyvek with polyester organza and machine stitching them together ready for zapping back - a bit like cheeky reverse

 Foredown Tower Well, I'm home from the Bluewater show, it was great fun and I enjoyed meeting so many of you. Thank you so much for coming to say Hello! I have booked Foredown Tower in Portslade near Brighton for six workshops from this October to next July. They make up a 'course' of kind. They start with design and end with Tyvek. I have already started taking bookings as I launched them with my September newsletter last week and then took a few more bookings at the Bluewater show so don't take too long if you fancy coming to play . . . . The views from the Tower are stunning. I had such a great time teaching at Foredown Tower over the past two months I wanted to teach there more often. It is a kooky kind of place. There is a cafe on the ground floor, the teaching room is on the middle floor and the camera obscura is on the top floor with great views over the downs. Access to the teaching floor is via an external metal staircase so there is n

 one of the beautiful layered samples created on the Tinkering with Tyvek workshop Last Saturday night saw me dashing up various motorways from Art Van Go in Knebworth to Inkberrow Design Centre in Redditch ready to start teaching on Sunday. I was booked to deliver 3 one day workshops - On the Surface, Tinkering with Tyvek and Transforming Transfers. As I  have just posted about painted Bondaweb I will omit the images of the On the Surface workshop and go straight to the Tyvek. We had one of the best days working with Tyvek that I have ever had.  I had a great group of students, some already attending the college and some were new to the 'Inkberrow Experience'. Brenda Killigrew who is the managing director of Inkberrow Design Centre  www.inkberrowdesigncentre.co.uk/?q=front_page_alt and Castanea  http://castanea-craft-courses.com/ was around most of the time, popping in to check we were well supplied with coffee and biscuits. Brenda is a very good friend of mine and it was w

One of the many great things about doing shows is meeting new people. Chris Gray from Mabon Arts had a stand across the aisle from us at FOQ and her stand was a joy to behold. Beautiful hand dyed silk threads and kits to play with. Chris was fascinated by my painted Bondaweb and asked to have a corner off one of my pre-painted sheets to decorate a sample she was working on. This is it in progress. Chris produces very sensitive work, very delicate - Yes! I CAN appreciate this - don't be shocked. The next day Chris gave me a bag full of divine threads by way of thanks, what a lovely thought. I was very tempted by all kinds of packs of dyed tissue and colour themed threads. Have a look at her blog and see what she has to offer, lovely stuff. Her new website will be 'up' at the end of this month. mabon-arts.blogspot.com x I am off to one of my favourite places to teach today - Art Van Go www.artvango.co.uk I am teaching a 3 day summer school based around my workshop Hot Ne