Artefact 2

First of all, a very big thank you to everybody who came to see me at The Scottish Quilting Show in Glasgow. I feel like I already have a bunch of textile buddies in North Ayrshire and we haven’t even moved yet! And thank you to the judges and sponsors of the open competition. Artefact 2 won gold prize in the new professional makers category and I got my first ever rosette! Absolutely thrilled and the rosette is now pinned to my design wall. The prize money was also very welcome …. I treated myself to some threads and a slap up breakfast at Nardinis in Largs before heading back home.

Back home means yet more sorting as we get the house ready to sell. Two tip runs yesterday and today I am jet spraying the front path before painting the door step, gate etc. Yes it’s an exciting life! Luckily I am getting about 3 hours each day in the studio focused on making art. I’m currently sewing sleeves on Shoreline II and have the potential fabrics for Shoreline III pinned on my design wall. Over the next week or two I will be making screens and printing fabric for the pieces I need to make for my exhibition in Telluride, USA in September. Exciting times!

For the first time since my very first show in 2018 I am actually ready for The Scottish Quilting Show with a few days to spare! Normally I’m busy folding fabric late into the evening before we head off. I could take a few days off. Hmm … that doesn’t sound much like me so instead I’ll be busy sorting more stuff out in the house and doing a bit of printing. I’m loving the better balance I have in my life without the constant string of deadlines associated with running a teaching studio. There is a lot of work still to do before we can put the house (and studio) on the market but there is also plenty of time to work in the studio, to meet up with friends, to roll over in bed for an extra 30 minutes, to settle down with a good book. I’m blessed!

And I am looking forward to seeing some of you at the show. It takes place at the SECC in Glasgow from Thursday 6th to Saturday 8th March. I’m on Stand M19 and will have lots of fabric to sell as well as some quilts that I’d love to find new homes for. I’ll also have my books, dyes, screens etc. I’ll be joined by best friend Ruth Brown who some of you also know.

Even if you can’t make the show you can still take advantage of this years show special - 50% off the cost of my Simply Screen Printing online workshop reducing it from £300 to £150. Please use the code SSP50. The code is valid for the whole month of March!

And I hope you will join me! This is the only show that I’ll be doing this year and it is my favourite. It takes place in Hall 4 of the SECC in Glasgow between Thursday 6th and Saturday 8th March. Opening hours are 10am to 4.30pm. The discount code above will get you (and your friends) cheaper tickets. You can find me on stand M19 which is on the far left hand wall as you enter the show. I’m between the lovely Jo Avery and Uist Strands. And you can find out more about the show here.

I’ve been exhibiting at this show since 2018 and the Scottish Quilting part of it has grown and grown attracting quilting tutors and artists from across the UK. It shares the hall with the Creative Craft Show but what started as a little bit at one end now covers over half the hall. It isn’t on the scale of Festival of Quilts but lots of textile groups have small exhibition spaces and the quality and quantity of competition quilts has improved year on year. I’ve even entered a piece into the new Professional Makers category!

I will be demonstrating screen printing on my stand and will be selling my books, dyes, screens etc and my Wonky Print Inspiration Packs as per normal. But this year I will also have lots of ‘sale’ fabrics. As part of clearing the studio for the big move to Scotland later this year I’ve created 45 Hand Dyed Scrap Bags from the fabric pile below. All hand dyed by me the cotton with pieces range from a few inches square to 10 - 12 inch pieces. At £10 for approx. 200g (1.25 square metre) of hand dyed fabric I think they are a bargain! I’ll also have a box of Randoms - pieces of printed, stamped, resist dyed, discharged (and more) fabrics that I’ve made over the years demonstrating different ways of adding colour to fabric. Most are fat quarter size and I’m selling them for £2 a piece so come and have a rummage!

I’ll be putting any packs / pieces that don’t sell on my online shop after the show for those who can’t make it. But for those of you that can visit the show please stop by and have a natter!

Breakdown Printed Fabrics

Work towards the big move is going well and I think we are still on target to put the house on the market in March although it might be on the 31st! Some areas are looking really good. We cleared all the book cases on the first floor landing and had the hall, stairs, landing and more stairs decorated last week. A new (cheap) carpet will go in next week. We also decluttered the kitchen so that it could be decorated at the same time. The cellars are mostly clear and son Joe has made lots of progress on his and Rileys (grandson) rooms. And I’m about 2/3 through the studio. Big pat on the back!

Next is the ‘dining’ room which is mostly a dumping ground for books, magazines, jigsaws, coats, bags etc and then there is my husbands study. Hmm ….. it is going to be a challenging few weeks. Luckily I can really only sort stuff for a couple of hours at a time before I loose the will to live and am forced, yes forced, to retreat to my studio. For the sake of my sanity.

And I’ve been having a wonderful time printing lots of fabric and working on new art. I’ve been using breakdown printing (what else) to create a palette fabrics that range in colour from a slightly muted blue through some beautiful chromatic greys to a slightly muted brown. I’ve adjusted my printing technique to create fabrics in differing values. The collection is inspired by the colours of the shoreline at Largs, the north ayrshire town that I hope to call home soon. I have one quilt nearly finished and am making good progress on a second piece. Their compositions are simple and abstract. As always I want the printed fabrics to be the stars of the show! As I think about composition I have been thinking about the effect of place on my mental state, a theme I explored several years ago in my Dunure series. I think about family stuff and the path my life has taken in recent years. And I look forward anxiously. So much hard work, so many uncertainties. The one certainty is art. It is my carrot.

Happy New Year, I hope you had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a creative New Year. I certainly am!

Because of the move to Scotland this year I have changed my teaching practice. I’m no longer teaching in my own studio but will be teaching in other studios through the year as well as taking my studio stuff out to visit groups. I’ve listed my teaching schedule below. Some of the courses are already full but have waiting lists. (I also have a couple of online workshops that you can sign up for at any time - you can find details here.)

16th to 20th June - Breakdown Your Palette at InStitches in Wokingham. The workshop is currently full but you can find details here and ask to be put on the waiting list.

25th to 29th September - Simply Screen Printing at the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, Colorado, US. You can find full details and book here.

2nd to 6th October - Luscious Layers at the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, Colorado, US. The workshop is already full but you can join the waiting list here.

27th to 31st October - Breakdown Your Palette at InStitches in Wokingham. Booking is not open yet but you can sign up to receive an email when it opens here.

22nd to 24th October - 3 day Luscious Layers at Littlheath Barn Studio in Bromsgrove. The workshop is alreadu full but you can join the waiting list here. I’ll also be returning to Littleheath Barn Studios in April 2026 details to be confirmed.

Yes, I’m going to be teaching in the US this year. I’m very excited because I have so many friends and online students there and can’t wait to spend time with them. I will also have an exhibition at the School in September. Telluride has a fascinating history. Today it is an artsy tourist destination in the summer and a ski resort in the winter but it used to be a silver mining town. So I will be exhibiting some of my coal mining and cotton mills pieces alongside new works created for the exhibition.

On top of all this I will have my usual stand at The Scottish Quilting Show in Glasgow from 6th to 8th March. And will demonstrating in (and helping to organise) The Creative Textile Studio at Festival of Quilts in August.

Looks like I’m going to be very busy but not as busy as I would be running a teaching studio etc so I will have plenty of time to make art (and move house). At least that’s the plan!

The Christmas tree is up, the presents wrapped and the cards written! And, judging by the lengthy food shopping lists, it must be that time of year again!

It will be a somewhat emotional one for us as it is the last Christmas that we’ll spend in the home we’ve lived in for over 26 years. But also one in which we look forward to a new life in Scotland.

This post is my last ‘work’ thing before I take a break from work and house clearing. But not a break from the studio as I’ll be finding time to make art … some ‘me’ time.

Thank you all for your support this year, my life is better for being part of this wonderful textile community. May I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a Creative New Year,

Leah x

It had to be done. Making a decision about what art to keep and what art will be sold, gifted or recycled before we move house (and studio) next year. And that is what I have spent the last few days doing.

The sad reality is that the older the piece gets the less likely it is ever going to be exhibited again so some decisions were easy. Others, not so easy especially as I needed to think in terms of what would I show in a retrospective exhibition which sounds uncomfortably pompous but a girl can dream. And then of course are the pieces I love most and can’t quite bear to get rid of.

You can see the pieces that I have decided to sell in my online shop or by clicking here. They range from small panels to medium sized quilts. There are pieces from my older series that I know I won’t be going back to - Hidden Messages, Print, Structures and Dunure (Still / Storm) along with some pieces from series that are still ‘active’ - Cadences and Traces (the coal mining series). And there are a few old ball pieces. I have reduced the cost of the pieces by 60 - 75% so the prices range from £40 to £495.

(And yes, I am keenly aware that selling art cheap can undermine the value of newer works but I would rather these pieces find a new home than end up being recycled …. something we could have a long debate about)

Let me know if you have any questions and please, please, spread the word! Thank you.

We’ve just got back from an important trip. Twelve days on the west coast of Scotland deciding where we will move to next year. I had already made my mind up (Largs) but wanted to take a deeper look at an alternative (Troon) just in case. Hubby was undecided and still anxious about leaving a big city for small town life so we planed on visiting different towns and having a trip into Glasgow.

Que lots of driving up and down residential streets, lots of coffee and cake and beer and food as we sampled what different towns had to offer and lots of promenade and beach walking in the mornings (for me, hubby rarely does mornings). We started by visiting ‘book town’ Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway as a treat for hubby although I bought more books than he did and a rather splendid jigsaw. Not a house move target, more a carrot to dangle in front of hubby as we ‘enjoy’ the high and lows of the move.

We then drove to Stranraer and up along the Ayrshire coast to Troon. A beautiful drive. Troon was our base for a week whilst we visited other towns nearby. We both decided that Troon was a good option albeit that there are a couple of areas where the seaside / harbour smell was a bit too strong so we’d need to deploy our noses when house hunting! We discounted most of the other places we looked at (won’t name them!) either because the town centers were depressing or there was no suitable housing that was both close to the sea and to the shops. Prestwick which has lots of independent shops and a lovely sandy beach could be a back up but doesn’t have many properties of the right size in the right place.

We then moved further up the coast to Largs via a trip to Glasgow where we visited The Burrell Collection (my favourite museum ever). The road from Glasgow to Largs is a bit wiggly but it was a proper road with white lines down the middle … I turn into a nervous wreck when driving on narrow, narrow roads!

We spent five days in a flat close to the town center with views across the water to the island of Cumbrae. Heaven. Wonderful walks along the coast with stunning views, small town center but with everything we would need, good transport links, bungalows of the right size within spitting distance of the sea and the shops, a decent collection of restaurants and pubs, a second hand book shop (top of hubby’s list) and Nardinis (ice cream heaven and they serve a damn fine cup of coffee!). SOLD.

Now the reality is that we will be renting before we buy and there aren’t many rental properties in Largs so we may end up in Troon or Prestwick or even Ayr at a push while we buy a place in Largs. And that process might take a while as we want to find the right place. I’m anxious about being without a studio but we are both agreed that it will be worth the wait!

My online Breakdown Printing workshop will soon be 4 years old and I’ve loved meeting students from all over the world. But the number of new sign ups has reduced significantly over the last year so I’ve decided to change how it is offered moving forward.

Originally offered with 12 months access and support via monthly Zoom meetings it is now going to be offered with lifetime access but without support via Zoom. I will continue to support students via email.

And the great news is that I’ve reduced the cost from £240 to £120!

You can find out more details here.

(I will be running Zoom meetings for existing students until the end of August 2025 and will continue to add the recordings to the workshop so they will be there for new students to watch).