What's new in the Classrooms
Create your own handprinted collage papers, perfect for sketchbook and mixed media painting. Then explore how you can expand your collage and have fun playing with scale.
Add a pop of colour and pattern to your home with this decorative mirror frame. Laura will show you how to paint and construct the frame using simple materials and techniques.
Discover how Linda chooses a fabric colour palette for a summer table runner inspired by a collection of hand painted ceramics. Follow our lead and be inspired by your tableware to make a perfectly coordinating quilted table runner. She uses stitch and flip technique in a quilt as you go method of piecing. This is an ideal project for making use of many coloured scraps.
Creating fabric design for digital print is just the start, once the fabric is printed you can still customise it using some of your favourite surface design techniques. In these workshops Laura shows how you can work with a digital print fabric to modify it with discharge dyeing and hand lettering.
Join Linda to paint a leaf in watercolour and discover how she creates organic, special effects and finally lifts out fine details.
If you’ve tried any of the quick piecing techniques that we’ve featured on DMTV, then it’s likely you’ll have quilt tops that need quilting! Fear not, Linda has some ideas to help you quilt the piecing and those tricky empty spaces in blocks. Join her to discover how she chooses the quilting designs for her strippy patchworks. She uses hand techniques to stitch a cushion front and then creates a completely different look with machine quilting to enhance a beautiful hand painted garland in the on point squares of a little quilt.
Slice up your scraps and use them with quick piecing methods to make beautiful quilt tops. This is a great stash buster and will quickly make a dent in your fabric pile!
Add extra dimension to your altered book by creating a secret door to hide something special behind.
Join Laura to see how she uses soya wax to create screenprint designs worked onto fabric with your favourite fabric paints. The wax has a very low melting point and is removed very simply with hot water making application and clean up a breeze.
Inspired by collected leaves, Linda’s working in her sketchbook with easy to achieve painterly effects with watercolour and acrylic inks.
Don’t lose your stitched samples! Keep them safe and organised in your sketchbook. In this class Laura will show you how to add your stitched samples successfully into your sketchbook and build a lovely reference of technique.
Experiment with transfer printing using disperse dyes or transfer paints on synthetic fabrics. In this workshop Linda will demonstrate how you can use real leaves to add decorative visual texture to your transfer papers before using them to colour fabrics including polycotton or Lutradur.
Join Linda for a look through one of her sketchbooks as she talks about mark making and then how it’s possible to interpret those marks into your textile work, in this case using dimensional fabric paint.
Learn how you can use regular household bleach to create stamped designs in your sketchbook or altered book. Linda will demonstrate using simple print blocks including ones made from her favourite print material – compressed sponge.
Join Laura is this video to see how she’s been experimenting with a technique that transfers drawings onto fabric using a silkscreen. She’s tried a range of printing mediums and shares with you her favourite. This is a fun technique that captures the essence of a hand drawn image but gives it the quality of a print.
Learn how to print a sequence of drawings using screenprint. We’ll hand draw onto the screen before transferring the work to paper.
Laura shares her favourite techniques for rescuing prints that haven’t quite turned out perfectly first time. She’ll demonstrate how you can improve your prints using editing, collage, drawing and painting. These methods are great for working into your monoprints, collagraphs and more.
We always encourage you to save your scraps, but what to do with all those bits of paper? They are perfect for using in a mixed media art journal page. In this video workshop Laura will show you how to quickly colour your sketchbook page using scraped acrylic paint, create a frame, add collage elements and draw linear details. The pages you’ll make will make the perfect home for your art diary writing, photos and collected ephemera.
Decorate any book with a crazy embroidered bookwrap.
Inspired by watercolour and pen drawings in Linda’s sketchbook, Laura demonstrates how you can take a successful sketchbook page and translate it into stitched textiles. From Linda’s lilac painting she creates a free appliqué with machine stitching.
We’re often asked how to translate successful sketchbook pages into fabric techniques. In this video Laura demonstrates how easily that can be done with a little sampling and experimentation. She’ll work with ink, acrylic paint and hand dyeing to interpret design ideas from her sketchbook pages.
Summer is the perfect time for enjoying the garden for all its inspiration. See how Linda’s flower painting in her sketchbook using a layered approach with pen and watercolour to create a beautiful study of lilac.
Create a collage on a panel or canvas using your saved paper scraps, acrylic skins, even textile fragments. Add a tint of colour with watercolour before adding a final coat of pouring medium to seal and create a slick professional finish.
A range of simple folded inserts can add such interest to art quilts. Every seam is an opportunity to add something extra! In this workshop Linda will show you some of her favourite choices for adding pops of colour and texture including prairie points and faux piping.
Applying what you know about design to your quilting can help achieve great results. Join Laura to see how you can add shapes to your quilting pattern by clever use of line and filling patterns. Follow her methods to discover ways of suggesting shape and pattern within your overall quilting design.
We’re used to working from light to dark in our sketchbooks so let’s mix it up and start with dark backgrounds and add white. Laura will show you how you can use a range of white and light media to add highlights and pattern to your sketchbook pages.
Considering the Elements of Design can seem daunting, but really they are just the ingredients in any project. In this workshop Linda discusses ideas for creating shape using a variety of lines, but no outlines! She also combines stencils and masks to create pattern within a shape.
Having used rubbings to create frames and windows, see how Linda is working into them with collage and drawing.
Some detailed subject matter can be daunting to draw from scratch. In this workshop Linda will show you how it’s possible to use a subtle stamped shape as the base for your drawing. Take all the guesswork out of getting the shapes right and instead enjoy creating a design and drawing the details. Then building on the sketchbook work that Linda did using stamps and drawing, she demonstrates how it’s easily possible to translate those ideas to fabric to make a stitched piece.
Make the most of accidental frames as a starting point for new work.