students painting up products I always enjoy teaching at Art Van Go , www.artvango.co.uk we are all SO well looked after. Fresh coffee and tea on tap with biscuits in the morning and chocolates in the afternoon. But I suppose you will want to know about the work! Hot Textiles 2 is the follow on workshop from Hot Textiles - funnily enough! The main idea of these workshops is the safe and creative use of irons, heat guns and soldering irons. Although my book Hot Textiles was published back in 2007 these workshops are still my most popular.  We were working with Vilene Spunbond, Tyvek, pelmet (craft) Vilene, Bondaweb, painted and plain and polyester organza, all the usual suspects. I also included Hot Stuff Sheets and Lamifix. As followers of this blog will already know, I have a passion for old painted and dyed newspaper. The faux chenille technique with newspaper was also tried out in this workshop to great success. It is featured in my new book and judging by the reactions fr...

this is how my head feels after the tears and the panic!!!! I got back from a a brilliant 2 days at Art Van Go to find that my mail order company website nid-noi.com was down. Not only down but annihilated - there has been a fire where the server is housed and I have lost all the information about orders and subscribers after 11th February this year. This is a nightmare as I have just had my busiest 2 months ever. All changes made to the site since then have also been lost. It will take a couple of weeks to get the site up to speed. The company that look after the site are working virtually 24 hours to get all their customers back up and running. If you ordered from me after 11th February and wish to order again you will need to re enter your details for which I apologise, similarly if you subscribed to the newsletter after that date you will need to re subscribe. I'm sorry to be so down on what was such a lovely day for 'The Wedding' but thought you all ought to kn...

layers of painted Bondaweb on black cotton, layered with heat transfer foils, gilding flake, glitter and skeleton leaves I'm just sorting out and packing up my kit for my 2 day workshop at Art Van Go. It's my new Hot Textiles 2 and I'm really looking forward to see what we achieve. As many of you will know I don't teach finished projects - just processes. It should be a great 2 days of experiments, colour and fun. After such a glorious weekend it is going to be hard to leave the garden looking so beautiful . Hopefully it wont dry out before I get back on Friday - we could do with some rain. I will report back over the weekend, enjoy your 3 day week.  x

  the last evening, the courses are finished and we are having our last drinks on the terrace The last day was a gentle dash to get samples finished and try anything anyone thought they had missed. It is always difficult to stop the day running away with you when you are finishing a course.     Jane Sadgrove had been working in the upstairs studio all week and had had difficulty getting Marion and Lee down for meals, they were totally hooked on what they were doing. They were learning special stitches and starting to make beautiful bags. They have the patience of a saint.     We all gathered together for a 'show and tell' at 5 o'clock and Jane Bolsover arrived with some fizz to finish the courses off with a bit of sparkle. Everyone seemed to be pleased with what they achieved during the week. Pauline taking a rest from entertaining us with great jokes all week The 2 Jills,  I am so cross this image is slightly out of focus, I was laughing when I ...

 one of the stunning floral displays in Murcia Are you bored yet? I am so enjoying looking back on our week in Spain but I do have a lot of images - I hope the amount of information is not too much for you all, I appreciate you can have too much of a good thing. I am now going to accost you with even more images . . .  from the left - Jill W, Jill G, Lee, Jane Sadgrove, Jane Bolsover (keeping us in order), me, the lovely waitress, Pauline and Marion   one of the beautiful buildings overlooking the square where we had our lunch Thursday afternoon saw us being collected from the studios and taken into Murcia for our tapas lunch and tour of the Real Casino, Museo Santa Clara and the Cathedral of Murcia. Lunch was great fun with everyone in high spirits - nothing to do with the wine flowing. The food was delicious and just when you thought all the dishes had been brought out, more were served. Then the paella arrived, piles of luscious seafood in fragrant rice - gorgeou...

  the mandarin tree outside the studio There are 2 studios at the Castanea villa one upstairs inside the villa and one out in the garden. My group and I were working in the garden studio, One of the greatest pleasures of the week (and there were many) was picking mandarins from the tree right out side the studio. MMMmmm!  I can taste them now - delicious. The very lovely Claire Muir, who is featured in this months Stitch magazine, was teaching at Castanea last month and her students very kindly left us some fruit in the middle of the tree . . . ! This is just a selection of the work that was produced last week and in no particular order. painted Bondaweb on black cotton with heat transfer foil   painted Bondaweb decorated with with snips of polyester organza and gold flake painted Bondaweb on dyed newspaper . layers of painted 75gm Tyvek and polyester organza machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun. The sample above was also attacked with  so...

  this stunning Houseleek/Sempervivum graces the front terrace of the villa Because of worries about the threatened Spanish air traffic control strike and illness we were a small and exclusive group. This meant we could get through a lot more work, it was a great luxury. It is unlikely to ever happen again so we all made the most of it. The timetable was -  Monday am - Market Monday pm - Studio Tuesday - Studio Wednesday - Studio Thursday am - Studio Thursday pm - Tapas lunch in Murcia than a guided tour and shopping! Friday - Final day in studio and 'show and tell'. Working in the studio during the week - As with all of my workshops we had to paint all the products before we could use them. Of course being in Spain that was no hardship, everything dried in record time. We painted up the Bondaweb and Tyvek with Colourful Thoughts paints from Cratynotions www.craftynotions.com These are high metallic paints that stay really bright even when you need to water them down to pa...