Polyester organza decorated with painted and printed fusible web then decorated with hand stitch The NW Region Embroiderers Guild summer school was held on 2nd - 4th June at Waddow Hall, Lancashire. http://www.waddow.org.uk/home.aspx   A stunning view and great workshop rooms along with really good food made a fabulous start to the residential workshops. I highly recommend this venue if you are looking for rooms to hire. The staff can't do enough to help, brilliant. This combined with a group of very keen guild members made sure I had one of the best experiences teaching a summer school.    My group was in a large airy room on the ground floor with plenty of tables and power sockets. The workshop was based on working with painted and printed fusible web. This was torn and ironed down to create a back ground for stitch. These backgrounds were decorated with combinations of Xpanadaprint, embossing powders,painted newspaper, gilding flake, mica flake or tr...

One of Sharon's great samples. I am catching up - Last week I had a fabulous 2 days at the Art Van Go studios. I always have great fun there, Viv and Kevin have become great friends in the years I have been teaching there.  'Sticky and Shiny' is a new workshop that I have written to help students understand the joys of foiling all the different glues. The glues we were working with were - KK Glue , Bondaweb , Fuse FX. We also played with Xpandaprint and embossing powders.  We had a good time playing together for 2 days and achieved some fabulous effects. Just remembering 'which way is up?' is a good start . .  then there is the baking parchment - soooooo important. The group getting down to some serious play. As most of you will know, I love Bondaweb. It is so versatile. Here a few samples of this fabulous product. Bondaweb cut to shape, ironed onto black fabric. The backing paper was removed when the Bondaweb was cool. The sh...

A splendid sparkly sample. So - that's The NEC done and dusted, at least until August anyway. The Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch Show was great fun and was very busy. I have various roles at the show, it is my busiest show of the year. One of my roles is to run the Vilene Workshop. 5 x 45 minute workshops a day with 5 different tutors. This year it was Lynda Monk, me, Fran Holmes, Tina Francis and Jayne Routley. One of my workshops getting under way. The workshops are free and are always popular. I will be running similar workshops at Excel from Friday - www.fashionembroidery.co.uk/london/workshops. I will also be giving a lecture every day. These are some of the samples the ladies produced in 45 minutes. Lots of sparkle and twinkle on painted Bondaweb. My workshop is 'Sparkle and Twinkle' , using all manner of sparkle and transfer foils on painted Bondaweb. This process makes fabulous surfaces for stitch. The other tutors had sta...