The 'before' photo . .  The lovely Laura Strutt who works with me on Vilene stands at all the shows. I couldn't do the shows with out her, her energy and humour keep me going. Well, that's that for another year. The Festival of Quilts was even bigger than last year, with fabulous quilt displays from all over the world. There were thousands of visitors every day, many from all points of the globe, including Australia and New Zealand. Working on the shows is a great way to keep in touch with friends, and of course, make new ones. The finished stand - in action. The lovely Laura showing off her fabulous samples.   The not so lovely and very hot Kim demonstrating her samples.   I made a new friend at the show - the very beautiful Laura from the Italian Vilene office. As you can see we got on well right from the start. We had great fun together and will no doubt be seeing each other again. One of the many great things a

A fab page from one of the sketchbooks. Apologies for being a bit behind with this blog, I was being a student my self this week - on a course with Gwen Hedley - FANTASTIC! I feel as though I have found my path again. It's time I stopped writing books and started creating work. So - The second sessions of Experimental Textiles went well, all the students came back!!! That was a good start - and with such fabulous homework and a good start on their sketchbooks. The homework was to take one design created on the first session and make a collage in black and white, maybe playing with counter change or inlay applique. These are just a few of the beautiful samples that were produced for homework.     This flipped and mirrored design was turned into applique and then mirrored blocks were cut.   The prints from these blocks worked really well and I will show them at the end of the month when the groups meet again with the rest of the fabulous prints.

Who'd have thought - from a pile of paper and painted Bondaweb . . . . I have just got home from three days at West Dean College a fabulous place to teach and a wonderful place to be a student. The grounds and gardens are stunning, the house is beautiful and the workshops are purpose built, great for accommodating any kind of workshop. The workshop was Reclaimed Textiles -paper, print and free machine embroidery. The workshops are very spacious. A stack of painted and colourwashed papers. We started by colour washing all kinds of papers - newspapers, old books, atlases . . .  and painting up Bondaweb. The group then launched into my 'prettys and backgrounds' technique where the papers are torn and layered several times with the painted Bondaweb. The use of sparkle was optional for a change.    Lots of luscious layers. The torn layered backgrounds were then used as background for print and stitch. Just some of S