Scrumptious Spunbond at Sylvia McCann's studio - Torquay June 18th


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 in two colours. Shapes were then cut out with a soldering iron. This technique is great fun, very relaxing. You can only cut as fast as the fabric will melt. Using a soldering iron will give you lovely flowing lines. You can cut with scissors, but you would never get the same shapes. The shapes were then lifted out and ironed onto a back ground of another colour of CS500.

I use Margaret Beale's system when teaching the safe use of soldering irons. A terracotta flower pot is the best stand you can have for a soldering iron. Margaret is the Queen of the soldering iron and knows best.
 

 Laying out the cut shapes ready to be ironed on.
 
 
 
 Playing with the soldering irons.

Some of the applique samples ironed off -

 
 
 
 
 This technique would be useful for lampshades, window blinds . . . book covers . .

 We then ironed painted Bondaweb onto polyester organza, decorated it with gilding flake, transfer foil and glitter and then zapped it with a heat gun - gorgeous!

 
 

 The group then applied the same technique to the heavy weight Vilene Spunbond - CS800 -
 
You can see the fabulous crunchy edges that you can achieve with a heat gun on this fabulous product.

The sewing machines then came out and we layered CS500 in colours with polyester organza - up to ten layers.
 
 
 
 
 These layers were then zapped with a heat gun to create some fabulous colour combinations and textures.

We had a great day - the group got on well together, some of them were with me the day before in Totnes and were also with me the next day for the design workshop. They were all very keen and a joy to work with. Sylvia and Alison are wonderful hosts and Alisons cakes are DIVINE!!!
Sylvia runs all manner of beading workshops - do have a look -

 *

I will post about the rest of the workshops when I get home next week - I drive to Bideford after the workshop tomorrow night ready to teach on Saturday. It has been raining very hard all day today and it's still raining now - I may well be aquaplaning all the way to Bideford.
x x x
 

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