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A fabulous show - part the second!

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   Two of Tracey's stitched colour samples. Well the show was less busy than previous years but that is hardly surprising considering we had so much snow.  Many thanks to all of you who braved the weather, it was wonderful to see you. It was a bit of an emotional few days with the knowledge that I wouldn't being seeing 'my girls' for while. Their course has now finished and we are recruiting for the next course which starts at the end of May. I know I will see them again, just not so regularly. I know you are not supposed to get attached to your students - but you can't help it when you have been together for just under a year.     One of Tracey's experiments with the Classic Pelmet Vilene.   One of Shaun's stitched print samples.   Heidi created a brilliant wall piece to illustrate her interest in D and T.  The piece had sections that moved and lit up. It is a very exciting piece. Sally created so much work she could have fill

What a fabulous show!

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   Just in case you thought I was slacking . . .  So - we have had a busy two days at Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch and.the weather doesn't seem to have put the visitors off, which is great. A huge effort goes into putting on this show and it would be a great shame if it wasn't seen by thousands. My Experimental Textiles students are showing their course work and some finished pieces alongside the catwalk. The ten metre stand is bursting with energy. I am so proud of my girls, they have done me proud. They have been taking it in turns to steward the stand and they are enjoying talking to the visitors and explaining what we get up to on the course.     Beginning to sort the hanging order. . . .      The finished exhibition.    A closer look at the design exercises the students use to take sections from to create printing blocks.    Some of the finished work and more considered samples.     . . . and more. The work on display is a very small sel

Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at the NEC March 21 - 24

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Chocolate wrappers free machine stitches with the help of Solufix and Solufleece. Oh how I suffer for my art!!! I love the bright, shiny colours of chocolate wrappers and enjoy using them as flashes of colour in my work. When ironed lightly between baking parchment they texture like Tyvek but remain soft enough to stitch into. They do ping about a bit if you try to free machine them but with the new Solufix I have no more trouble with them. Solufix is a self adhesive water soluble fabric on a strong backing paper that is removed to reveal the sticky side of the Solufix. Because the backing paper is so firm it means you can run it through an ink jet printer, print your design, remove the backing paper and then lay threads around your design and free machine to your hearts content. You may need to cover your threads with a layer of Solufleece if any of the glue is exposed. The glue will not affect your machine needle.    I stuck all my chocolate wrapper strips to the Solufix

Snow, a translation and looking ahead . . .

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Hot Textiles has been translated into Spanish - Whoo hoo! The journey home from Glasgow on Monday was a bit scary - well the first bit of it was anyway . . . .The M74 was very, very, frightening. One minute there was a reasonable amount of snowfall - The next, there was a whiteout. The traffic ground to a halt and we sat around for a while, an hour or so and then we started to move, slowly. With the ever useful travel information on the radio we were informed of an accident that had closed the motorway several miles ahead. We eventually diverted off the Southbound M74 via Lesmahagow, to return to a much faster moving M74. On the Northbound M74 there was a horrible accident involving two lorries and several cars. The scene certainly made me drive much more sensibly than usual . I delayed my journey home to Brighton as I heard on the travel news that the M23 was blocked with poor drivers stuck in the snow, most of them all night! Luckily my best fri

Creative Stitches Glasgow

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 New samples by Margaret Beal. Well we have had two great days so far at the SECC in Glasgow and we expect to be even busier tomorrow. It is great catching up with friends and meeting all the interested visitors.  I haven't seen Margaret Beal for a while so it is good to catch up with her and hear about her new book that is out this year, which I totally forgot to ask the title of - Duh! Margaret on her stand. Helen McKenna has a very colourful stand full of recycled delights. Helen's new recycled felted dress full of strange and unusual delights . . . Pat Archibald had a beautiful stand full of beautiful quilts and sparkly delights. Caroline Earl is local girl and it is so good to her again. Val Hughes is here with her beautiful felted pieces and an amazing felted dress.   Wendy and Rob  Dolan are here too, I seem to Wendy at more shows around the country than at home and we live in the same town! We are both always travelling. W

Texturing Decovil 1

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Beach huts on Seaford beach front. I had a rare weekend off this weekend and spent a lot of it at my sisters in Seaford. We had a great time together with lots of food and drink and a good walk on Sunday morning in the freezing cold. These modern beach huts line a section of the front and are very cheerful. I have been trying out some techniques for my workshops at the NEC this month. I will posting more information next week. I want to show how versatile the Decovil 1 iron-on interfacing is and one way to work with it is to texture it. At the moment I am using 5" texture pockets which aren't really big enough. Sissix were bringing out 12" texture pockets but they still haven't materialised. If any of you know of any 12" pockets I would be grateful if you could let me know. I cut an 'envelope' style bag out of Decovil 1 with my Big Shot Pro die cutting machine.   I then foiled the sticky side with transfer foil.