I am very pleased to announce that you can now buy my first book, Breakdown Your Palette, as a digital edition on my website! This version costs just £12 and you can find out more about the book here and buy it here.

It is nearly two and half years since I published this book and I have been overwhelmed by the response. But I know that shipping makes it expensive for those living outside the UK and, since Brexit, sales within the EU have decreased significantly. I did look at selling it via Amazon using their global print on demand service but, frankly, the quality of the printed copy I received just wasn’t good enough. Yes, Amazon would maybe bring in lots more sales but this is my baby and I’m letting my heart rule my head this time!

Instead I have created a digital edition of the book and hope that you can help me spread the word!

As a little incentive I will donate £1 from every digital book sold during the month of July to the charity that I’m supporting this year, YoungMinds. The charity supports children and young people with mental health issues in the UK and it’s work is more important than ever as children's lives continue to be impacted by the pandemic.

I am running out of the printed version of the book but have decided to order another print run for those who want to order a physical book and for selling at shows and other events. So if you see a ‘sold out’ notice on my website don’t worry, the book will soon be back in stock!

Bye for now, Leah

If you follow me on Facebook you might have already seen that the copies of my new book arrived safely, albeit a day later than expected. 55 boxes of books stacked on a pallet! To say that my heart was in my mouth when I opened the first box would be an understatement. My proof copies were printed using a digital printer whereas the main print run was offset / litho printed and there is always the risk of colour shift between the two. I’m delighted to say that the colours were all OK and the book looks fabulous! Which made me very happy (and a little tearful)!

Son, Joe was somewhat less happy as he had to carry most of the boxes down into our cellar!

But it has all been worth it. I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who ordered Colour Your Palette, and to everyone who ordered other items from my webshop. Your support means the world to me and my family! Over the last three days Joe and I have packed and shipped 154 parcels with Joe doing most of the runs to the post office. He is a star!

You may remember that I promised to donate £1 to The Trussell Trust for every book pre-ordered between the 1st and 10th November. I am delighted to let you know that 151 books were pre-ordered and that, along with sales of charity bookmarks, I was able to send £206 to them this morning. With gift aid we have donated £673.75 since the lockdown in March. Like many other textile teachers around the world my income has been significantly affected by the pandemic. But I’m lucky - if things got really bad we have property and pension pots as a safety net. The Trussell Trust provides food banks for those, often young families, who aren’t so lucky. It is going to be a long, hard winter for so many and I’m grateful for your help in supporting them.

Thank you x

Thank you to everyone who has been placing orders for my new book and other ‘stuff’ via my website. The response to Colour Your Palette has been rather overwhelming and very much appreciated. The books are ‘in production’ and due to be delivered to me on Tuesday (10th). I aim, with the help of son Joe, to get everything shipped within 3 days. Which has meant getting organised.

I do like getting organised so this has been a real treat! I have set up piles of ‘book only’ orders by destination and postage type. And I have been putting together the orders for those of you who have ordered fabric, dyes etc along with your book. These are also organised by destination and postage type. I’ve ordered and received the packaging that will be needed. And Joe has created storage space for the 50+ boxes of books that will arrive on Tuesday.

We have worked out a system for checking books and packing them. I’m in charge of shipping labels and order confirmations. Joe is in charge of taking parcels to the post office. Call me weird but I love stuff like this! (I suspect Joe might not love it quite as much as he is doing all the heavy lifting!).

And whilst I wait for Tuesday I’ve been taking time out to ‘recharge my batteries’. After shipping out all the books I want to get back to ‘making’. I’ve done plenty of printing, dyeing and playing for the book but it is 6 months since I worked on my art. Six months since I sat at my sewing machine. Far too long!

Stay well,

Leah x

Colour swatches on a piece of silk linen fabric

First of all, a great big thank you to all of you who placed orders for my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ yesterday!

I spent the morning emailing students to cancel all my November workshops due to the UK lockdown that starts on Thursday. My lovely students were all great and most have just moved their bookings to next year but I still felt incredibly sad as I look forward to having students in the studio so much. Seeing the orders come through for the book made the day easier. (As well as providing a much needed income!)

In this post I’m going to share a few pages from the book starting with the contents page. There is a lot in my book. I start by looking at traditional colour theory and colour practice when using dyes. I then take the reader through the creation of a series of colour references that not only illustrate the reality of working with dyes but also create a catalogue of hundreds of swatches of different colours each with the exact recipe needed to reproduce them.

Page 3 - Contents

Page 14 - Hue - one of the fundamental properties of colour

Page 41 - Scraping swatches of colour onto fabric

Page 45 - Adding more swatches

Page 63 - Looking at our colour references and what they tell us about our base colours

After step-by-step guides to creating colour references I include a section on how we might use them - to match individual colours, to create a range of colours based on one hue in a range of values (monochromatic), to create a range of colours in a similar value that are analogous and to create a range of colours that differ in both hue and value (colour families). Again, lots of step-by-step instructions and photos.

Page 109 - Matching individual colours

Page 125 - Different ways of mixing colour families

I then change tack and go back to colour theory, looking at traditional colour schemes and how our artistic styles might affect the types of palettes of colour that we develop for our work. I was honoured to be allowed to share examples from some great artists in this section - Charloote Ziebarth, Christine Seager, Diane Melms, Julie Bunter, Leslie Morgan and Uta Lenk - thank you! And, through a series of colour studies, I looked at how we might work with different types of sources of inspiration for colour.

Page 144 - Types of colour scheme

Page 148 - Colour study based on photos of the beach at Dunure, Scotland

And finally, well nearly finally, I include a section giving instructions for some of the techniques I used to make the samples in the book. These are ‘tried and tested’ techniques that I’ve been using for years. There are a myriad of different ways to add colour to textile and some excellent books already out there. My book is more about the understanding and control of colour when using any one of those techniques.

Page 164 - Dyeing small pieces of fabric in a plastic bag (you can do this in containers if you don’t want to use bags!)

Page 176 - Simple screen printing technique using shredded paper on the fabric as a resist

Page 184 - Yes, I include a short section on breakdown printing!

And finally, I have included an extensive Appendix which is chock full of information about the science of colour, the dyes and other chemicals we use etc.

I recognise that the structure and content of my book is a little different. But in it, I share the sum of my knowledge to date with the hope that it inspires you to delve deeper into colour.

Stay well,

Leah x

You can now pre-order my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ via my on line shop. The book costs £25 (+ postage) and I expect to start shipping globally from the 10th November.

Colour Your Palette is a practical guide to understanding and using colour when specifically working with Procion MX dyes. But the principle behind the book, and the exercises it contains, could equally apply to other dye types. I have attempted to translate traditional colour theory, based on paints and paint pigments, into colour practice when using dyes. Because dyes do not behave like paints. Dyes are not a surface application where the colour is ‘stuck’ to the surface like paint on paper. Dyes penetrate right into our fabrics, our yarns, our fibres, and our threads reacting with them chemically at a molecular level. They don’t make our fabric stuff and they don’t fade when washed. Dyes are translucent - we can print or dye our textiles multiple times adding layers of texture and shape. But they do come with some limitations that mean the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using paint are not the same as the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using dyes.

Colour Your Palette is a ‘big’ book at 216 pages but my aim, in writing it, was to provide a guide that helps you achieve the results that you want time and time again. A guide that gives you all the information you need to create colours that make your heart sing!

To coincide with the launch of my new book I have added a selection of new products to my website. In addition to all the dyes and other chemicals I am now selling three sizes of screen (for screen printing), wide necked squeezy bottles (for storing thickened dyes) and acrylic mixing plates (for mixing small quantities of thickened dyes, mono-printing and so much more). And I have put together a range of Starter Packs with a 15% discount on the cost of the individual items. I’ll talk about these more in the coming days.

I have also added some new Wonky Print Inspiration Packs of my own printed and dyed fabrics.

And, just to remind you, I will be donating £1 for every copy of Colour Your Palette sold between the 1st and 10th November to The Trussell Trust, supporting food banks throughout the UK.

Thank you, and stay well, Leah x

PS. I have scheduled this post, and all the new products, to become public at one minute past midnight on the 1st …… or at least I think I have!

The files for my new book, Colour Your Palette, are with my printer and I’m expecting my ‘proof’ copy on Wednesday. Wednesday is also my husbands 59th birthday - I know what I’m more excited about!

The ‘proof’ copy is a final check on the 350+ images in the book rather than the words or the layout. The colours we see on a screen are not always the colours we get when we print images. I’ve printed the book on my own laser jet printer but the real test is when the book is printed on the correct paper. I felt physically sick when I got the proof copy of my first book as I had nightmares of having to re-photograph large sections of the book but in the end only changed one image. So this time I am a little more relaxed. And enjoying a few days rest before it arrives.

If all goes well I will place the order for the books at the end of next week and receive them towards the end of the following week, a few days ahead of my planned publication date of 10th November. Phew!

The book will be available for pre-order from the 1st November but I have already added details to my website so if you want a sneaky peek of what is in Colour Your Palette click here.

And, as a reminder, I will be donating £1 for every book ordered between the 1st and the 10th November to The Trussell Trust.

In one section of my upcoming new book I look at how we might extract palettes of colours from a range of different sources of colour inspiration. When developing colours for new projects I sometimes jump straight in, mixing and playing with thickened dyes straight onto my fabric. At other times I need something to get me started, and a simple paper exercise can be just the thing I need to help focus my ideas.

The image above is my (current) collection of Colour Catchers. Colour Catchers are the paper-like laundry aids that prevent colours bleeding. I use them whenever I’m washing freshly dyed or printed fabrics. They capture any stray dye and are brilliant! I snip pieces from them when carrying out a colour study but many people use them in mixed media projects or as a base for embroidery.

Below are images from one of the worked examples in the book …… my starting point was a collection of photos of the beach at Dunure, Scotland, my second favourite place in the world after my studio!

Colour Your Palette will be available to pre-order on my website from the 1st November with shipping expected to start before the 10th November. I am so excited!

I am so very excited that my second book, called ‘Colour Your Palette’ is close to completion. It has been a bit of a slog but I’m just a few more hours work away from sending it to the printers for a ‘proof’ copy so that I can check the colours of the images (all 340 of them!).

It is a book about colour. In it I translate colour theory, which is nearly all written about paints, into colour practice for people, like me, who use dyes to add colour to fabric, thread, yarn etc. Dyes do not behave like paints. They come with some limitations but those limitations are far outweighed by the potential dyes give us to build up layers of colour, mark and shape on our cloth. And they are wash fast!

I take the reader through the creation of a series of colour references that teach us how a huge number of colours can be mixed from a starting set of eight base colours, how the order in which we layer our colours matters, how different fabrics take colour differently and how you can accurately match or reproduce colour irrespective of whether you are using thickened dyes to screen print or powdered dyes to dye fabric in a bucket.

I look at different colour schemes and guide the reader through a series of colour studies which look at different ways collections, or palettes, of colours can be derived from different types of colour inspiration. Although this isn’t a book that focusses on lots of different techniques for adding colour to cloth I do include a section on the tried and tested methods I use in my art and that I teach in my studio. This has turned out to be a big book, over 200 pages! ! I’ll tease you with more details over the coming weeks.

Colour Your Palette will cost £25 + shipping. After a lot of thought I have decided to make it available for pre-order from the 1st November with the first books expected to ship on 10th November (or earlier!). Sometimes pre-order means a discount but I’ve decided (on your behalf!) to donate £1 for each book ordered between the 1st and 10th November to The Trussell Trust, a UK charity that runs food banks and campaigns against food poverty. Since the beginning of the pandemic you guys have helped raise over £400 by buying my charity bookmarks. It would be nice to increase that in the run up to Christmas.

I’m so excited! And just a little bit tired ……

Leah x

I just realised that I have been neglecting this blog! I haven’t even given you a porch update. I’m happy to report that it is because I have been super busy working on my next book and teaching.

The porch is beginning to look like a porch. For a while it was more of a pergola than a porch but it now has a roof and part of two walls. It means we can be Covid-19 safe and work with the studio doors wide open and it doesn’t rain in. It isn’t quite at the stage where it helps keep the studio warm on cold days but the lovely badger, with a little help from bodger, is getting there. Because we are doing this cheaply we haven’t poured a level foundation so there has been a far bit of swearing trying to get everything square! It will be worth it!

Teaching has been going well with some amazing printing this last week. My students are happy with the layout of the studio and the new rules. It is so important to me that we get this right as I don’t want to increase risk for my students or my family. Nine weeks with additional local restrictions hasn’t reduced the numbers and I suspect we will see more restrictions in the coming weeks and months. But we soldier on!

I only have two free spaces left on workshops this autumn. One is on my Creative Surface Design program starting on 21st and 22nd November and the other is on my five day Print, Stitch, Go! workshop on 9th to 13th November. If you are thinking about booking but maybe have some concerns re Covid and local conditions please get in touch here and I’ll do my best to help.

And finally, the book. The content is done. Words, samples, photos. The last few sections will be going out for their final proof reading this week. So now I just have the layout to do. Just. I’m considering adding padding to my table top as I know there will be some serious head banging as I try to remember how to use InDesign. And swearing. I can guarantee there will be swearing! But, just like the porch, it will be worth it!