My first 4 books . .    Welcome to my new blog subscribers.  I have 2 mailing lists one for this blog, and one for my newsletter. This blog tends to be a long read, it can contain all kinds of things, my life here in Ireland, my dogs, my travel, whatever takes my fancy, I can ramble, I like to talk to you all. There is a search engine in the top right hand corner, I have been writing this blog for 10 years or so, so if you want to find out what I have written about Lutradur or Tyvek or New Zealand, anything really . . just pop it into the search engine My newsletter is more of a short read, what is happening with my teaching, news of shows and new travel tours. That kind of thing.         I don't know if you can hear it from where you are, but my brain is whirring with new ideas and techniques. While I am filming and updating my 12 most popular workshops, I am developing new ideas to share with you. My 'what happens if . . ' head is definitely on. More of that in a mi

A sample beaded vessel for the Baubles, Bangles and Beads workshop Looking inside I love working with different sizes of beads   It's nearly here - The Festival of Quilts 2023. www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/exhibitors/kim-thittichai/  The last show I did was Festival of Quilts in 2019. Then the world ground to halt! It seems to have taken ages to prepare for this show. Just the admin takes a lot of time, and then there are the decisions on how to dress the stand. What do I want to promote and how do I want to promote it? What will I sell? Various heat distressed effects on painted and layered Tyvek Well the decisions are all made and I am halfway through loading the car ready for the drive over to the UK on Monday. I will be promoting the Experimental Textiles Video Library & Membership with a special show discount and selling various packs of Hot Spots and Tyvek along with 2 special packs of transfer foils. I will be demonstrating on the stand every day. I will be in the Qui

A great vessel decorated with Tyvek and polyester organza flowers.                                                      Mary Kay Aukea   Do you feel that Zoom meetings are the norm now? They can't replace the engagement of in person meetings, but they are brilliant when you can't get to a meeting or a workshop because of time restrictions or physical distance. I am getting used to teaching workshops via Zoom. I recently delivered a lecture and a workshop spread over 2 days for The Needlework and Textile Guild of Michigan , USA. Because of the time difference the workshop needed to be delivered in 2 halves. The Needlework and Textile Guild of Michigan https://www.ntgm.org/   is a multidisciplinary fiber-art guild. The purpose of the guild is to bring together members who learn, share, teach, and participate in workshops, talks, and demonstrations relating to a wide variety of the fiber arts. Members have interests ranging from quilting and embroidery to weaving, wearable a

Chasing rainbows Having taught many students over the years, from 4 year courses to one day workshops, both in person and online, I get quite lot of interaction via email. News about exhibitions of work, getting onto a higher education course, that kind of thing. I was delighted to receive an email from Carrey Gorney last week. Carry has taken various workshops with me, both in person and online. A few years ago Carry created a body of work entitled 'Burnt Histories' - "I have created ghostly portraits using the torn pieces of lace and faded photographs carried out of Germany by my Granny and her sisters when they fled the Nazis. They were always sewing, even before” Kaiser Bill” led the Germans into World War One. My grandmother had longed to become a doctor, like her brother, to rip up her sewing, to rip open her corsets and to become herself. I have ripped, scorched and singed the last fragments of their v

A rather splendid sample of textured Tyvek. Happy Easter!! It's a wild and wet here in Ireland. A good day to catch up with my newsletter and this blog. I hope you are all enjoying a day with family or friends and eating way too much chocolate . .  My recent online Zoom workshop Tinkering with Tyvek yielded some fabulous work. I do have wonderful students. Just look at this Tyvek dress made by Arley Berryhill. Small scale Tyvek dress by Arley Berryhill Arley is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has worked with me on a few workshops. He is a fantastic doll maker and costume designer and maker. Do look at his website - https://www.arleyberryhill.com/ It is not often I see anything resembling gold work on my workshops!! Arley created this great sample by stitching Tyvek to gold lamé and then texturing it with a heat gun. Beautiful faux gold work, just fabulous       I love the way Arley has added beads to accentuate the edge of the Tyvek shapes. This workshop was quite international with

Painted and textured Tyvek and painted Lutradur cut with a soldering iron. Workshop 6 - Zap, Pow, Slash & 3D. Well it's been a busy few weeks. We had another shoot for the new website. I think we have everything we need now. Today we were shooting with a drone for some landscape shots around the house. I think we can safely say Fizz and Pop are not fans of drones.  They HATED the noise and the hovering. So much for having shots of them from above gamboling happily in my field. Never mind - we tried. David has already taken all the photos of my photos, we had fun moving the furniture around to get the 'feel' for each image. It will be great to be able to sell my work online. Here are few images of David from  Lukewarm Volcano at work.   I am really looking forward to seeing these shots on the new website.  *** The Show and Tell for Raising the Surface went well. I am so glad I decided to do a show and tell 2 weeks after each workshop. It means I get to see what the grou