book cover created by melting plastic shopping bags together between baking parchment   Wow!!! What wonderful weather! I hope most of you in the U.K have managed to get out in the sun - if only for a few minutes. It is not until it gets quite warm that you realise just how dark and cold it has been. From my window I can see the early sun on the white blossom of the Hawthorn tree at the bottom of the garden against the bright pale blue sky - beautiful. One of my jobs to catch up with this week is to write a few workshops for the VERY patient Kathy Troup of Stitch magazine, Kathy has only been waiting for 2 years. While going through my images to decide which ones to use I came across some I had put somewhere very safe - and then couldn't find them!!!!!  Early this year Laura Manning sent me these fabulous images of book covers and small bags created using melted plastic bags. I met Laura at the Design and Technology show last November and she told me that she had been running

Well it's nearly here, the biggest show of the year for me - Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch/Sewing for Pleasure/Hobbycrafts. 3 shows in 1 - you will need 2 days to get around it! I will be part of Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch along with many fantastic textiles artists and tutors and some superb exhibitions. The fashion shows will be even more exciting this year with some stunning work from students across the country - you won't believe your eyes! I will be on stand L18 opposite FibreFusion and hope to be on my stand for most of the day demonstrating and showing you how to heat and colour metal with a heat gun and layer it up with Vilene Spunbond. I am also organising the Vilene Workshop on stand Y02. I am very pleased to have some of the top textile tutors offering free short workshops everyday of the show.   my new heat gun is powerful enough to colour metal- FANTASTIC!    I will have plenty of the 7 colour packs of Vilene Spunbond CS500  last year I ran out of S

Alison helping Alyssa with the layout of her sample One of the great things about this course was the way the group all mucked in together sharing threads and materials and best of all - ideas. Keeping the balance between teaching processes and techniques and allowing the students to have time to develop their own ideas is always a hard one for me. I find it difficult to leave them alone! On longer courses it is very important for me to leave time for the students to be able to develop techniques and processes in their own way as much as possible. heat gunned dyed Vilene Spunbond CS500 and polyester organza Bondaweb was applied to the back of pre coloured Vilene Spunbond CS700 leaving the backing paper on the Bondaweb. This was then cut into delicate designs with a soldering iron. The designs were then lifted out and ironed onto a background of the heavier CS800 When using Bondaweb for applique on synthetic fabrics I find it best to leave the backing paper on the Bondaweb while you

Hello again and welcome to my new followers. I seem to be having trouble getting on with things this week. I had 2 more very hectic but enjoyable days teaching at Harrow Way Community School in Andover (see Thursday January 6th) on Monday and Tuesday and spent most of yesterday in a daze and recovering. Am I getting too old for all this dashing about? Consequently I am behind with paperwork and updating this blog. However - here I am now!   West Dean College This will be a 3 part post on the tales of my course at glorious West Dean College last week We had a fantastic time with the students producing work of a very high standard. To do the work justice I will separate it into sections. We will start with using old painted and dyed newspapers. The students enrolled on the course were - Mike Wallace, Janette Lazell, Linda Beadle, Rose Chapman, Alison Davis, Alyssa Bacon and Avril O'Brien. One of the luxuries of teaching at West Dean is the small group sizes, each student

busy students creating fabulous samples Saturday 8th January saw me teaching a group of very capable ladies who were great fun from the Cotswold Embroiderers Guild. The Guild hold their workshops at the The Reddings Community Centre in Cheltenham. It has fantastic facilities with plenty of room, tables and SOCKETS! When working with a variety of heat tools it can be a real pain to have to keep unplugging an iron to use a heat gun. This centre was pure luxury. We were working with Vilene Spunbond and layering it with painted Bondaweb. It was a great day and we covered several tec hniques. It was great fun and as you can see from the samples the ladies worked hard. Vilene Spunbond CS 700 & 800 painted and dyed. Bondaweb ironed to the back and leaf shapes cut with a soldering iron and than ironed onto more CS 800. Detail Right side of sample - Vilene Spunbond CS 800 painted and dyed and then zapped with a heat gun, the 'crunchy' edges were then foiled with heat transfer f

My first teaching session this year was at Harrow Way Community School in Andover on Tuesday the 4th January. I had been invited to design a workshop for students who are extending thier access to new textles techniques. The school has a great reputation for Art and D&T. Sylvia Harvey is the Head of Art & Design and is highly aware of the importance of art textiles within education.  torn, painted Bondaweb decorated with artichoke heart seeds, skeleton leaves and glitter I had an exhausting, fascinating, exciting and very educational day. As most of you know I teach adults and have very little experience with younger students. But I am learning very fast!! Because I have a stand at The Design & Technology Show every year I have become very aware of the lack of textile teaching in many schools, whether it comes in the form of fashion/dressmaking courses or art textiles. This is not the fault of the schools, they can only teach what they are told to. I think this will chan

  happy students in Sarah's VERY well equipped studio I was delighted when Sarah Lawrence of  Craftynotions invited me to teach 2 one day workshops at Craftynotions base camp in Newark, Nottingham. The first workshop was based on Vilene Spunbond and the second on Tyvek. The students were - Mary Kerr, Sheila Buchan, Jackie Litchfield, Cheryl Herod, Carol Devany, Janice Rose, Judith Gill, Margaret Williams, Linda Sottle, Anne Marsen, Jean Baker, Elaine Winterton and Brenda Wilkinson. Two of the ladies did both workshops and one of them came all the way from Edinburgh.   layers of Spunbond and polyester organza stitched together then zapped back with a heat gun The first day was devoted to colouring and distressing Spunbond. Sarah has developed a new range of absolutely fabulous paints and sprays that work particulalrly well on all Spunbonds and Tyvek. I have waited a long time to find the perfect paints, but I think I have found them. As some of you will know - when painting produ