A great vessel decorated with Tyvek and polyester organza flowers.                                                      Mary Kay Aukea   Do you feel that Zoom meetings are the norm now? They can't replace the engagement of in person meetings, but they are brilliant when you can't get to a meeting or a workshop because of time restrictions or physical distance. I am getting used to teaching workshops via Zoom. I recently delivered a lecture and a workshop spread over 2 days for The Needlework and Textile Guild of Michigan , USA. Because of the time difference the workshop needed to be delivered in 2 halves. The Needlework and Textile Guild of Michigan https://www.ntgm.org/   is a multidisciplinary fiber-art guild. The purpose of the guild is to bring together members who learn, share, teach, and participate in workshops, talks, and demonstrations relating to a wide variety of the fiber arts. Members have interests ranging from quilting and embroidery to weaving, wearable a

Recycled cardboard packaging woven into with printed newspaper. The completed weaving was then printed and hand stitched - by Shaun West   I have been teaching weaving as part of the Constructed Textiles module of my course Experimental Textiles for many years. When I taught 'in person' we would create a huge pile of fibres, paper, yarns, fabrics and plastics in the middle of a huge table and the group would take what they thought would work for them. We always concentrated on interesting texture rather than weaving techniques. It is quite possible to create something rather special with simple techniques and interesting materials. The work in the first 5 images in this post was created by Shaun West in 2013.  All you need to weave, is a grid or a warp. With recycled cardboard packaging that is sliced in regular intervals it becomes quite possible to stretch it out and weave into it. Choosing to weave with painted and printed recycled newspaper keeps to a muted colour pallette.

Still Life box by Jane Wolfe   I had intended to add a few of these images to my newsletter, but this collection of work is so good, I wanted to write more about them, so I am writing an extra blog post. The three students mentioned today are on the current online Experimental Textiles course. When drawing and painting is not normally part of your practice, it can very daunting to paint and draw a still life. I don't ask students to draw for the sake of making a picture, I ask so they can actively look at line and form. The spaces in between, the composition. Above - Jane's still life. Below - the still life drawing Jane's finished box. The still life was stuck to orange cotton then cut to shape and folded.   To make drawing and painting a still life less terrifying, I tell my students they will be tearing their work up when the they have finished drawing and painting. This helps to take away the fear of what the finished drawing or painting will look like. To make it more

Chasing rainbows Having taught many students over the years, from 4 year courses to one day workshops, both in person and online, I get quite lot of interaction via email. News about exhibitions of work, getting onto a higher education course, that kind of thing. I was delighted to receive an email from Carrey Gorney last week. Carry has taken various workshops with me, both in person and online. A few years ago Carry created a body of work entitled 'Burnt Histories' - "I have created ghostly portraits using the torn pieces of lace and faded photographs carried out of Germany by my Granny and her sisters when they fled the Nazis. They were always sewing, even before” Kaiser Bill” led the Germans into World War One. My grandmother had longed to become a doctor, like her brother, to rip up her sewing, to rip open her corsets and to become herself. I have ripped, scorched and singed the last fragments of their v

Nicola and Pops I have just returned from a few days away staying at Clasheen in Carlow, Ireland with my great friend Nicola Brown. Nicola and I met when we were both teaching at Geelong TAFTA Forum in Australia in 2015 and have been good friends since. We tend to get together 2 or 3 times during the year depending on how busy we both are and if we are traveling a lot. Nicola is a brilliant eco printer, eco dyer and feltmaker. She works without traditional powdered mordants to create her beautiful eco printed and eco dyed fabrics. Nicola has a huge amount of information on her YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@clasheen , you can follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nicolabrownclasheen/ With me being so interested in synthetic fabrics and distressing them with a heat gun and soldering iron, you might wonder why I would want to learn about eco printing . . Nicola told me I could eco print on nylon. My head exploded with ideas when she told me this! It's great at N