Well I am home now and exhausted but boy was it worth it. What an amazing show - Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch was even bigger and better than last year with some beautiful exhibitions, great textiles artists and tutors and some amazing work by college students . This will be a 2 part blog. I will cover the college work and fashion show tomorrow - this post is about friends . . .There will be plenty of other blogs giving you a detailed description of the show. Wendy Dolan Wendy's current work involves working with old maps, beautiful, subtle and simple stunning.  Wendy has 2 pieces of her work in my next book.   Wendy Dolan had stand a the show and when she wasn't teaching a workshop in the Bernina Workshop she could be seen working hard on her stand demonstrating her 'architecture' and 'landscape' packs. It is great to be seeing more of Wendy, we were at the Glasgow show together and will be at the Liverpool show in May. I can't wait to show her and he

Well it's nearly here, the biggest show of the year for me - Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch/Sewing for Pleasure/Hobbycrafts. 3 shows in 1 - you will need 2 days to get around it! I will be part of Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch along with many fantastic textiles artists and tutors and some superb exhibitions. The fashion shows will be even more exciting this year with some stunning work from students across the country - you won't believe your eyes! I will be on stand L18 opposite FibreFusion and hope to be on my stand for most of the day demonstrating and showing you how to heat and colour metal with a heat gun and layer it up with Vilene Spunbond. I am also organising the Vilene Workshop on stand Y02. I am very pleased to have some of the top textile tutors offering free short workshops everyday of the show.   my new heat gun is powerful enough to colour metal- FANTASTIC!    I will have plenty of the 7 colour packs of Vilene Spunbond CS500  last year I ran out of S

Friday 18th saw me driving along the A27 at an unearthly hour to deliver an 'On The Surface' workshop to the Txstyle 10 group. Txstyle 10 is a group of 10 ladies who all took their C & G qualification with Susan Chapman and have continued to meet and develop their work. 75gm Tyvek, painted, textured with heat and foiled It made a great change for me to be teaching 'On The Surface' as opposed to 'Hot Textiles'. 'On The Surface' is a workshop based around experimenting with Tyvek and painted and decorated Bondaweb. We added Vilene Spunbond to the workshop as the group hadn't had much of a chance to play with that yet. The group spent most of the morning painting the products as it is crucial to learn to paint the products with the correct paints and with the correct thickness of paint. The students learned my 'kiss, stroke and carress' process for texturing Tyvek with heat and the 'welly, wiggle and off' process for foiling the te

Wow! What an amazing group. I was booked to deliver a lecture on the Saturday afternoon and a workshop on the Sunday in the local Darby & Joan Hall in Cottingham. The hall was packed on Saturday with a vibrant group of ladies of all ages. The lecture was well received and I was fascinated to see how the group was run. I am used to travelling around the country to Guilds and private groups and it is always interesting to see how things are organised - or not! This has got to be the most organised, friendly and possibly largest group I have encountered.  The group was started in 1982 by a C and G embroidery group with some of the original member still attending  The group were about 30 strong and have grown to 136 members. The E.Y.E.S. group also have an 'Eyelets' group for 5-10 year olds and a 'Highlights' group for teenagers. It was an absolute joy to meet everyone. some of the group working away in the workshop The workshop was Hot Textiles and we had a larger

This is just a quick post as I have just returned from Yorkshire and will tell all tomorrow but just had to show you the cover of my next book - Layered Textiles - New surfaces with heat tools, machine and hand stitch . The book should be published by Anova/Batsford books mid August. til tomorrow. . . x

What a sexy little beast!!!  The heat guns have arrived and I am SO excited. This one is definitely worth the wait. 10 degrees hotter than my previous one so it is 360 watts - not only that, but it is 2 speed so you can use one speed for fine fabrics and for embossing and the higher speed for distressing the heavy Vilene Spunbond CS800, acetate satin and Kunin felt. Only distress synthetic fabrics - if you are not sure - do a test and if anything smells strongly - stop! Just to remind you all - when using a heat gun, always work on baking parchment/paper or a heat proof surface and make sure the room you are working in is well ventilated. Never paint products you are going to distress with oil based products as they will give off fumes when heated. I would avoid aerosol based sprays as well. Basically just be careful and use your common sense. If the product you are heating starts to turn brown - STOP - it means there is a natural fabric in the product and will not melt. In extreme c

one of my groups of keen students trying some new techniques Well here we are, another week on and I am sitting in my room in the Travelodge after a hearty breakfast about to pack up the car and start the long drive home back to Brighton. I have had a great if very busy and tiring time in Glasgow. The show was very busy and it was great to catch up with friends and customers up here.  Wendy and Rob Dolan were also with the show and we went out on the town on Friday night. We went to Ashton Lane in Glasgow - first of all we saw The Kings Speech at The Grosvenor Cinema, this is a refurbished Victorian cinema furnished with large leather seats with places to hold your drinks and food. You can buy a bottle of wine to take in with and a plate of Italian meats and olives if you fancy, or fresh popcorn or . . . .  you get the idea. After the film we manged to stagger 3 doors along to The Ubiquitous Chip, an amazing restaurant serving traditional Scottish fayre with a very modern twist. We a