Painted Vilene Spunbond CS 800 with Bondaweb ironed onto the back, cut with a soldering iron and ironed onto black cotton - basically applique - just using a soldering iron to cut the fabric as opposed to scissors. This technique can only be done with synthetic fabrics - soldering irons will not cut natural fabrics. After the joys of the Creative Fibre Festival  (www.fibrefestival2012.blogspot.co.uk do have a look and scroll right down) I taught a 2 day workshop - Extreme Surfaces for Stitch - Because some of the students weren't aware of some of the basic techniques we started right at the beginning so we ended up with more of a Slightly Less Extreme Surfaces for Stitch. The main thing is the students got the information that they needed.  Painted Bondaweb and various weights of Vilene Spunbond drying .  I thought Alison's plastic apron was particularly fetching - on the right . Denise my minder mucking about for the camera on the left and Christi

 Layers of Vilene Spunbond CS 500 and 800 zapped and layered with polyester organza and mounted on hessian.  Phew! what a week - it was very full on what with staying in Katoomba and teaching in Springwood but we coped admirably with lovely students providing lifts. I was staying in a little house with my wonderful friend Mary Hettmansperger who was also teaching and who makes the most beautiful metal jewellery.  www.maryhetts.com All the classes for the Contextart Forum were held at Springwood High School or Korowai School . I had 14 students in my class which overlooked the school playing field. Everyone got on very well and all were happy to work on samples rather than make anything considered 'finished'. The group worked well together and we all soon gelled. You can almost hear the cogs turning with concentration.   Sulpher Crested Cockatoos wrecking a tree out side our window.  I'm afraid I was bit naughty now and then when I

 The ever popular newspaper faux chenille wrapped into a dinky little vessel. This is going to be rather a long post, I haven't been able to get internet access for a while so I am still catching up. Tomorrow is the last day of teaching in The Blue Mountains and I haven't finished raving about last week yet . . . . The course at Ballarat was 3d based, we used several different types of interfacing, both sew-in and iron-on. The classic pelmet Vilene sew-in interfacing was used as a support for the newspaper faux chenille. It helps stop you cutting right through the final layer.    This lovely sample of newspaper faux chenille just used black, white, red and silver and looked stunning    This rather fab piece of newspaper faux chenille was mounted on an old rusty dustbin lid that was found lurking around . . .  This was originally one piece of faux chenille that was cut into six and then turned to create the above    Catching the 'furrows'