2019 Bath Textile Summer School

Bath, U.K. ,12-17 August 2019

    The classes have now been posted on the Bath Textile Summer School website for next year, you can find them here to learn more about what I am teaching. Hover over the 2019 workshop section, and you will find me last in the drop down menu.  This year pictures of some of our past workes are included on the information page, so as to not be confusing, I thought I would post pictures of both class projects here. Above is "Pretty Ladye", and below, "Bath Bunny".  My focus this year is surface techniques, for those who would like to add a beadwork element on to a casket panel or picture. Both classes work with modern Japanese Miyuki size 15/0 seed beads, so they have nice large holes, and are both good representations of the details one can get with this larger size of bead.   Pretty Ladye is a super special class, each large bust is sculpted with brown lampwork glass eyes. Aside the fact it takes me about 3 weeks to sculpt a single figure, I had a horrible time getting suitable glass eyes this small, and for this reason, BTSS 2019 may be my only running of this class.   (She would be a wonderful start to the top of a casket...hint hint!)

    Bunny is so adorable! Students of this class will learn detached techniques, such as the flower petals, and my method of working up an animal figure in beads using twilling, or peyote stitch.   I am making a great effort this year to keep the kit cost as low as possible, but more even, the international shipping~ so I will be only shipping the prework kits for each class, and handing out the rest of the kit in class. Prework will include silk satin ground, instructions, and padding for the cartouches only, so packets will be small to keep both shipping & customs charges to a minimum. 

One things I love about teaching the beadwork, is that my methods can also be used for regular raised stumpwork in silks and metals threads.. the materials maybe different, but the way one goes about it, in the steps, is the same for both.

 I have been plugging away on my special something and am super happy with how its coming on so far.  I really love 17th c blackwork, and it is such a challenge to creating depth on a flat surface while painting with a single color.  Like I said, I am painting one for me, and one to share, so here I took advantage of having two to show the difference between just penwork, and painted. I loooove it!  This bunch of grapes took just under 3 hours to paint...of coarse I am keeping track of the hours!