A stunning piece of work combining Tyvek with decorated and painted Bondaweb. Denman College is the home of the W.I. The main building is Georgian and is set in beautiful grounds with many specimen trees. I always have great fun there - you seem to get a different type of student, I can't quite put my finger on it, but they are usually up for anything. You no longer need to be a member of the W.I.to enrol on courses so do have a look and see if anything takes your fancy - www.denman.org.uk The workshop I was delivering was On the Surface - my basic Bondaweb course with a bit of Tyvek thrown in for good measure. As the courses I teach at Denman are residential the students can work in the evenings which means we can get a bit more done. Usually stitch - a very important part of my teaching.    The group working in The Ferris Room - there were 10 in all. The maximum, such a treat to have low numbers. As the jam festival was on while I was there we weren't

  Don't you love copper?  Well here we are, Christmas is gone and the New Year is looming - have you finished doing the washing up yet? I finished all the glasses this morning so now my kitchen is clear - Hurrah! I am slowly catching up with what I got up to in November.  The 7th weekend of my Experimental Textiles course is a students choice. The group can negotiate which techniques they want to play with or they can use it as chance to catch up with their folders. Jamie Malden from Colouricious kindly made this video for me at the Harrogate show to give you all some idea of what we cover on the course.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vwcwmHjv8  (you can skip the advert at the beginning) Experimental Textiles teaches you all the basic techniques and skills that you need when working in textiles. None of my 'Hot Textiles' techniques are included in the course - They are fun but can be learned from books and videos. The studen

A delicious combination of colour and glitz. Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I seem to have run out of steam . . .  I will be catching up over the next week or so as I still have some fabulous work to show you from my Experimental Textiles group and a class I taught at Denman College earlier this month. The workshop for the Cotswolds Guild was A New Starting Point - combining the heaviest iron-on interfacing S133 with layers of torn newspaper, painted Bondaweb and all kind of glitz. Using the heavy interfacing as a backing the decorated samples can be cut to shape with a die cutting machine.   Brooch blanks cut from this sample. Some of the layered samples before they were cut to shape                  . . .  and here are some of the layered samples before and after they were cut to shape.                      Faux chenille is also a part of this workshop, it always amazes me just