Indigo, Silk-Screen, Bags, Sarves .....

I have had a very busy time recently, so not had a great deal of time to write anything. I was over in the Uk in October at the Quay Arts Centre on the Isle of Wight working in their fabulously well equipped teaching space overlooking the river, 2 days of fun feltmaking with a group of about 10 people each day.

Day 1 was making nuno felt and embellished felted jewellery, and day 2, 3D feltmaking, where students made either a bag or a pot, using 2 different felting techniques. The photos speak for themselves.

Later that week at the City Art Gallery in Southampton, I gave a day class in screenprinting using hand cut stencils, this was a great success and all went home with fabric prints a plenty. And with much hard work, Prema even created some fabulous T shirts with a very simple but effective design. Well done her.

I was also able to cram in a day in London and went to Origin at Spittalfields to see lots of lovely handcrafted things for inspiration.

Then back here in France we were able to put on a day of Indigo dyeing with shibori. Deborah brought some of her homespun alpaca wool to experiment with ;

and Melanie went home with a beautiful upcycled indigo/shibori dyed shirt. 5 of us had a great day, wish it had been sunnier though, but lots of good company made up for the lack of sun.

I've now had to move the studio indoors as it's too cold to work in the Tex'Atelier barn, but next April we will open it up again for some new and exciting classes. Watch this space


I'm sowing some woad this week for next years classes so come the Spring we can be working with the traditonal dye material from this corner of S.W France.

I've recently been concentrating on creating some wax resist and indigo dyed pashmina type scarves, either in wool or viscose for, super colour, machine washable and lovely and warm too, perfect pressies.

 I have also created some small lined vintage linen bags/purses with a long strap. An ideal gift for the busy woman who travels, as they are perfect for flying, enough space for your essentials such as lipstick, glasses, money and documents



(I recently made one for myself and found it really useful at security as you don't have to cram it into your handluggage, just treat it as another item of clothing that goes through the xray, and it has a hidden pocket for those all important documents and passport. Oh and it also looks good too!)

I'm now making some lovely soft upcycled blanket cushions embellished with vintage linen.. I found a beautiful old witney blanket that needed some TLC - Pictures coming soon .............