Fabulous layers of colour - just fantastic.  I seem to be in the mood to write - so here we are again. Sooner than expected. I love teaching this workshop. Transforming Transfer is my workshop that teaches you how to work with disperse dyes/transfer paints. The dyes are made to work with synthetic fabrics and they form a chemical bond once they are ironed onto synthetic fabric. Immediately washable. These dyes can be used on natural fabrics, they transfer paler and to make then washable there is a product called Transfix. The dyes can be thickened if you want to print with them. Art Van Go do a great starter pack. www.vycombe-arts.co.uk The dyes are painted onto paper . . . cheap copy paper is fine. The paper doesn't need to be absorbent or the dye wont transfer efficiently.    Thimblestitch@Zoe's has a great studio above the shop  Painting the dyes onto paper. Once the painted papers are dry - the papers are ironed, paint side down onto the synthetic

 The tutors had a short bus ride to the symposium every morning - we decided the group name for a gathering tutors should be a cacophony.  Can you imagine why?  The Quilt Symposium 2015 Palmerston North was a brilliant event. I have never been part of something so large and so very well organised. It was VERY impressive. I taught 5 one day workshops. All my workshops were full which was very satisfying - you never quite know when you are an international tutor, has anyone heard of you?  The first workshop was A New Starting Point which I wrote about in the previous post.  So - to continue . . . . The second workshop was Transforming Transfer. We had great fun painting papers with disperse dye (transfer paint) and then transferring the designs onto synthetic fabric. You can achieve fabulous layered effects with this process.  Some of the group getting stuck into painting the disperse dye (transfer paint) onto paper ready to transfer onto synthetic fabric.  Playing

A leaf has been used as a resist and then turned over and printed off. I am very late with this post - Life has been hectic and I have had friends from New Zealand staying with me. So to catch up . . . . Transforming Transfer was a two day workshop that I very much hoped would run at Art Van Go . Transfer paints are actually disperse dyes. They were created in the 1920's to colour the new fabric made from nylon - which was synthetic.  Disperse or transfer dyes seem to have fallen from popularity in the past ten years or so. It is one of my favourite printing processes and because you are printing onto synthetic fabric, it can be cut with a soldering iron and zapped with a heat gun! 'Procion' dyes dye cotton, silk and viscose. 'Acid' dyes dye wool and silk and 'Disperse' dyes dye synthetic fabrics. Because the disperse dye is painted or printed onto paper and then transferred to synthetic fabric with heat - the dye have become known as 'transfer