One of my favourite pieces of painted and distressed Tyvek - Ever!    Is it odd to have a favourite sample of Tyvek?   Tyvek is one of my favourite products. Having taught all my heat processes for so many years, I thought I had probably taught most of the people who were interested. Apparently not! My first book, Hot Textiles seems to be having a bit of a revival, and with that comes new interest. So, in response to all the emails and messages I have received asking how do I work with Tyvek - I have written 2 new workshops. How to enrol and all the details are at the end of this post.   All the samples in this blog post have been made by students on previous workshops with me. Some are from as back as the early 2000's. The first one will be Workshop 4 - Raising the Surface. You may have noticed that I LOVE working with painted Bondaweb. You can create some fantastic effects by adding transfer foil or gilding flake. But as you need to iron Bondaweb, your work is always flat. Adding

Poppy on Kilkee beach.   I have adopted a rescue dog - and am a tad behind with everything!  Those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seen quite enough of her already. She is great fun and keeping me on my toes. She is 11 weeks old and I have had her for 6 days. We are getting used to each other . . .  What breed is she - Yes! Good question - her mum is a Lurcher - her dad, unknown! She will be a surprise. One of the positive sides to my new friend is that I will be walking more - much more. Poppy enjoying playing with a radish!   Right back to the blog -  I had a stand at The Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch Show last month. It was a great show and I got to see a lot of you. Thank you very much for coming to say hello. Whilst I love living here in Ireland, I still do enjoy doing the the shows in the UK. It helps me keep in touch with what everyone is up to.  The best part of the show for me was the 3 groups of ex Experimental Textiles students who exhi

 A Tyvek and polyester organza corsage by Mo Henderson in France. Online workshop - Manipulating with Heat. A bit of news about the online teaching and how it is going.  Not having taught online before, I wasn't too sure how it would go. Not having a frame of reference, I could only be guided by what other textile tutors are offering.  It has been a steep but generally positive learning curve. We had one or two teething problems on the first workshop, Manipulating with Heat - but judging how a lot of the students are STILL producing work on this workshop, we have got everything right now . . . . . .    A stunning cellophane bead and flower necklace by Mo Henderson. Online workshop - Manipulating with Heat.  As the workshops are based on a fast paced one day workshop, I thought the students enrolled on the workshops would work through the exercises over a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, depending on how much time they had. Well the videos went up on May 2

  A rather stunning piece of work.  *** Just a note about the names of products in different parts of the world. Lutradur is one of the names for CS800, it is also known as Spunbond. It is the same product but is known by different names around the world. Vliesofix is also known as Bondaweb. It is the same product. While we are at it - Vilene is now using their European name Vlieseline. The products are the same - the name has just changed slightly. There is a fabulous new website that helps you identify products and discover new ones - have a look . .  www.vlieseline.com *** The second workshop I was asked to teach for Cutting Edge Textiles was a 3 day version of Layered Surfaces for Stitch. Using Tyvek, Lutradur/CS800 and painted Bondweb/Vliesofix. However, as the a lot of the students booked onto the workshop had seen all the results of New Starting Point gracing my Facebook page over the past 6 months, they also wanted to try that. So we did. Having 3 days w