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

  Various  weights of Vilene Spunbond cut with a soldering iron and bonded onto CS800  Glasgow here I come!!! I will be leaving tomorrow to start the long drive up to Creative Stitches at the SECC in Glasgow. www.ichf.co.uk It is a 4 day show from the 3rd - 6th March. I will be on stand no ZG01 and will be running 4 x 30 minute workshops a day on the stand. Tickets are on a first come, first served basis. The workshops are for 6 people at a time. Scrumptious Spunbond  30 minute Workshops Everyday - Book places with Kim 10.30, 11.30, 12.30 & 2.30    Come and discover the versatility of Vilene Spunbond CS 500, CS800 and Bondaweb, learn how to colour and distress these wonderful products. Experiment with different weights of Vilene Spunbond and heat tools to layer up a fascinating sample to take with you.  Layers of CS500 colours zapped with a heat gun to create a fantastic texture to stitch I love the journey up North and look forward to the views through Dumfries and Gallow

The Freudenberg Vilene Stand The Freudenberg Vilene Boys I was demonstrating on the Freudenberg Vilene Stand at the trade show and running their retailer workshops everyday. I love working at this show as there is always calm atmosphere compared to the very busy consumer shows that I demonstrate at. It is all very sociable and professional. Having to work with 3 lovely boys is no hardship either. It was great to catch up with the Freudenberg Vilene team, particularly Gemma who will be also be helping me on my stand at Fashion and Embroidery in March when I will be running the Vilene Workshop. More of that when I come back from Glasgow. The workshops were short teaching sessions once a day for 20 people lasting 45 minutes. They are quite a tight turn around. This year I was showing how to use heavy iron-on interfacing with a Big Shot Pro die cutting machine and then everyone had a chance to decorate the boxes by ironing on sequins, glitter and foil. The iron-on interfacings have a g

This is me on my stand looking very studious - a nice tidy stand - NOT!!! The Creative Stitches Show at Brighton Centre was last week-end and it was VERY busy. It was great to catch up with ex students and friends I haven't seen for a while. It was also wonderful to be able to dash home every night - all the other shows  I do are at least 50 miles from Brighton.  The Brighton show is one of the smallest shows that ICHF (International Craft and Hobby Fairs) offers as The Brighton Centre is a very small venue. It is not large enough to fit all the exhibitions in that larger venues can hold so it was a taster of what is to come at Glasgow SECCC 3 - 6 March and the very exciting Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at the NEC, Birmingham 24 -27 March. I will post more about this show next month. On of the exhibits at Brighton Centre was 'The Undoing of the Corset', a fascinating insight of what used to 'lie beneath'!!!!! This exhibit will travelling with all the ICHF shows

A small postscript after the Wey Valley Workshop post. While I was setting up the lecture and workshop that Friday, Mary Gray showed me a sample of her final project for the HE Diploma in Stitched Textiles at Windsor . She had used plastic carrier bags and machine stitch to create a remarkable piece of work. I was so impressed I asked her to send me an image so I could show all of you how amazing it is. Any of you who have read Hot Textiles will know of my love of melting plastics.    Mary's statement follows - TRANSIENCE  My work concerns the depiction of fragmented and distorted imagery on the multifaceted surface of moving water. The challenge has been to capture the complexity of the fractured reflection, created by a swimmer breaking through the surface of the water and the refracted images that the moving water makes of the swimmer. Mary Gray I hope you think it is as amazing as I do . . . . . . . . x  

I am a bit late posting this - time run away from me again (such a naughty boy!). The second layouts for the book arrived this week and needed to be checked which lost me 2 days, but it is looking good. It should all be finished and off to the printers in 2 weeks somewhere in the far east. The longest process in all this book writing malarkey is the journey from the printers to the U.K. by tanker. It takes 3 months!!!!!! We are hoping it will be out and ready for the Festival of Quilts in August.       the lovely ladies of the Wey Valley Workshop busily working away The Wey Valley Workshop are a group of ex City and Guilds students that meet up regularly for workshops and lectures. The group is well organised and seems to run like clock work. It was great fun working with them and everything ran smoothly. It was particularly good to see Liz Holford again. Liz was on my Experimental Textiles course for 3 years and I could always rely on her to help with any embroidery stitches I didn&