Cottenham exhibition

Debra's  beautiful jackets made from her screen printed and devore'd fabrics

Shirts made up from her printed fabrics - Debora

Felted scarves & slippers - Gill & Diana

Caroline C  -Fun range of screen printed fabrics

Fabrics from Betty showing both handcut and photographic screens

And a  photographic print of her granddaughter -Betty

Discharged and overpainted velvet - from the wonderful Betty

Tailored jacket made from her screen printed fabrics - Debora 

Lengths of cloth by Jean

And another from Jean

Lindy - dyed, transfer printed, stitched, cut - everything!

Philip's frogs!

And more from Philip

Sarah's printing shirt - gets more and more covered every year!

A tablecloth from Sarah

Jane's  nuno felt

And David' sl prints! see more of his prints at his exhibition at St Neots museum!

Here are  pictures from the exhibition of work done by very talented and hard working students who have done various textile classes with me at Cottenham village college.  Well done everyone!   It was an exciting and diverse display with lots of really inspiring work.

Music and Screen Print

Cary is performing tomorrow night at Denver Mill Music evening and I can't be there. But  I am lucky enough to have my own 'private view' or rather 'hearing' of his lovely music most days in our kitchen.

So,  I have been inspired by his magical guitar playing not to mention his beautiful guitars to create this length of fabric.  I must do some variations on the theme .........time - if only we had more of it.

Devore in a day workshop

Hi all - back from a long period of communications blackout.  We had no phone or internet for 2 months.........I don't even want to explain why- too complicated.  Anyway am back from the wilderness and looking for some nice creative pictures to share with you.

The devore class at Cottenham Village College- all students work (some of it 'in progress"). Forgive me,  it's been so long now since we did the workshop I've forgotten whose is whose so other I can't give credits where they are due. Enough to say - well done all they are absolutely sumptuous!

Alice in Ramsey

 These are the banners I worked on with the children from Ramsey Junior School Ramsey Junior Schooland the Spinning Infants School for the Alice in Wonderland production at the Junior School. The play was directed by the the very dedicated teacher Ms J Charot and was a great success - as was the final celebration featuring the Mad hatter himself and some wonderful hats made by a group of women who live in the Red House working with Sandra Scott whose work you can see at  Sandra's blog. The project was funded by Vital Communities Arts Council East, and facilitated by Viv Peters, arts development organiser supreme!

Banners drying in my studio after being heat fixed and sprayed with fire proofing

Each child designed and screenprinted one square.

And the final celebration with the mad hatter and his fabulous circus skills workshop

and a mad hat made by group working with Sandra

Amazonka  - Cary Outis

caryoutis.com is about the 2nd most interesting site you'll ever view. After mine.

Transform a T-shirt

Some pictures from "Transform a T-shirt" - Screenprint workshop at Melbourn Village College run by stART.  Young people chose shirts from a pile of jumble and screen printed them. We had a lot of fun and a great way to give new life to an old shirt!

Hand Dyed silk - Betty

Nuno Felted scarf on hand dyed silk chiffon - Gill

Hand dyed cotton & wool then felted - Betty

Sideways view of Phillip's silk scarf Inkus

Carol's Wizard of Oz scarf

Diana's scarf - detail

And what it looks like on!

Gill - hand dyed fleece, using acid dyes

Phillip's ever shrinking scarf

Jane - nuno - twice felted - definately worth the extra effort!

And Karen's nuno with soft edging.

Fantabulous work done by adult learners on the 5 week Dyeing to Felt course which finished today at Cottenham Village College CVC. I only wish I'd taken more photos!

Devore Day!!!!

Ah devore - the process of burning away certain fibres in order to reveal the fabric below, creating subtle and beautiful effects.

This is a very exciting workshop where you will make a scarf by screen printing onto velvet with devore paste, then dye it using both procion and acid dyes. Take note though that materials will be quite expensive for this workshop but you will learn lots of skills in a single session and with christmas coming up it would make a very special handmade present for someone.

At Cottenham Village College CVC Workshops on 19 Nov 2011 from 10am - 4pm - Cost £30 + materials. Contact CVC and ask for a full pamphlet with more details.

Isleham School curtains

I thought it's time I uploaded some pics of some recent school & community arts projects.  These are images from a project I worked on with Isleham School.  The school wanted some curtains to cover open storage areas in the classrooms. The class had been working on a Fenland theme  and we used this as our starting point. Each curtain had a different focus - traditional tools and implements, wildlife on land, and wildlife under water. The class did a good amount of preparatory work befor I came in - looking at museum artefacts, nature and doing sketches. On the day, they drew their images up to the correct size. We looked at how we could simplify drawings and the children ( 10 & 11 yr olds) cut out their pictures and screen printed them on the curtains.

I was really impressed with the standard of work!  Well done to all who took part - young people, teachers- the wonderful Mrs Chapman and TA's   Isleham school

Screen print taster

And  a Screen print taster day to be held at Art van Go   www.artvango.co.uk

Here are some pictures of my own work to give you some idea of what can be achieved.  But remember that my aim as a teacher is to encourage you to find your own style and to develop your own way of working - wheather you want to achieve a very graphic end or a more serendipitous playful result

Dyeing to Felt

I've got an exciting new course about to start next week:  Dyeing to felt at Cottenham Village College.  The aim is to make 5 scarves in 5 weeks!  The course includes various felting techniques with an emphasis on exploring the creative possibilities of nuno felt and the processes involved in dyeing and cross dyeing to achieve really exciting colour in your felts. I'm really enjoying doing some new work as samples for this course - felt is just so sumptuous! and I'm loving the process. More info from www.cvcweb.net