A beautiful composition, good use of colour and texture with interesting positive and negative shapes!!! Whilst I am now on my fourth day of my 'tour' of The West Country, I am still catching up with the blog - there are only so many hours in the day. Day two saw me teaching at Sylvia McCanns studio in Babbacombe, Torquay, teaching Scrumptious Spunbond. This is the second time I have taught at Sylvia's studio. A well equipped studio that is large, light and airy and is a joy to teach in. Sylvia and her daughter Alison always look after everyone really well.  We had a large group 15 in all, but the joy of working at Sylvias is that there is power to all the tables  - bliss! The group worked with decorated painted Bondaweb, polyester organza and Vilene Spunbond.  The painted Bondaweb drying in the garden.  We painted up some Bondaweb and while that as drying we had a play with soldering irons. Unpainted Bondaweb was ironed onto Vilene Spunbond CS500...

Gorgeous over printing. Today was the first day of five workshops I will be teaching this week in Devon and Cornwall. It has taken some organising but we are well on the road now.  The first workshop was Transforming Transfers for the Totnes branch of The West Country Embroiderers. It is a very simple workshop that always yields great effects.  Some of the group getting down to it . . .  I took my heat press with me as it can be very annoying waiting to share an iron. The heat press is very hot and very fast. Disperse dyes/transfer paints were painted onto paper. Once the paint was dry the papers were ironed, paint side down, onto synthetic fabrics. We were using Evolon, ployester satin, polyester velvet and Vilene Spunbond.    Leaves were used as a resist on this print.      The leaves were then turned over (they are covered in dye) and printed onto fabric.  This was the final print.  More plants - ...

 Painted Bondaweb decorated with gilding flake, dried rose petals and dot jewels.  We had a fast moving workshop on the Hot Textiles taster day at Denman College. www.denman.org.uk The main workshop is next month. We worked through painting, decorating and foiling Bondaweb and zapping Vilene Spunbond and cutting it with a soldering iron. We also worked with Tyvek and Hot Spots!     The Textile Studio at Denman is light and airy and very well equipped.     Three of the group machine stitching the Vilene Spunbond layers together - ready to zap!      Painted Bondaweb decorated with dried rose petals, transfer foil and 'blingy bitz'.      Unpainted Bondaweb cut to shape and decorated with gold transfer foil.    Six different coloured layers of CS500 Vilene Spunbond, machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun.      Green, yellow and orange CS500...

The field opposite the tower. The second day started with a 'show and tell' of the work from yesterday. It was a surprising amount of work. We then got on with experimenting with Tyvek. I wanted to show the group how to raise the surface of a Bondaweb based piece of work. As Bondweb is ironed, it is flat, and sometimes you need extra texture. Small strips of Tyvek or Tyvek beads can help.  Introducing Tyvek might not have been my best plan . . .   I also mentioned how to make corsages . .  and they were off!!!! Not in the direction I was planning!!    Two of yesterdays Hot Spot! samples.  My plan for today had been for the group to have a quick play with Tyvek and then get on with a considered, stitched sample using painted Bondaweb - Huh!!! Fat chance!!    Olivia making several corsages at once.    Pip going into mass production.            As you can see, they...