I have had a good life.  Fortunate to have enjoyed the benefit of a first class education without crippling student debt. Fortunate to have brought our first house when my husband and I were just out of university. Fortunate to have been able to buy a larger house as our three kids got bigger. Fortunate that our house is big enough that our oldest son and grandson can live with us and still feel like they have their own space; their own lives.

Which is just as well as our son, a single parent on a low income, cannot afford the £750 per month he would need to rent a small 2 bed terraced house in Salford. And he is not alone. The charity Shelter estimates that 150 families become homeless every day in Britain. 150. A day. In what is still one of the richest countries in the world. I hope I won't offend anyone when I say that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Homeless doesn't just affect those who struggle with mental health issues or those with substance abuse problems. It isn't a lifestyle choice. It can affect anyone. The break-up of a relationship, a landlord selling up, redundancy, spiralling debt when wages don't keep up with inflation. It doesn't take much and the problem is getting worse. The charity estimates that there are 128,000 children in the UK today who are homeless.

I have a good life. I have the time, money and space to make art. That is why I will be giving 15% of sale proceeds from my upcoming exhibition at The World of Glass in St Helens to Shelter. And, for the duration of the exhibition (17th March to 4th May 2018) I will also donate 15% of any sales from my website to the charity.

In aid of Shelter: Registered charity number 263710

I'm slowly working down my pre-exhibition to do list and am now the proud owner of postcards and display stands. I ordered my postcards from Moo. I have used them for business cards and love the quality of their products. This time around I was disappointed with some of the postcards - the images of my very pale 'Traces' pieces came out dark and dull. Not to worry though. The kind people at Moo have given me lessons on using the right colour profile (CMYK) and are going to reprint them. Great customer service! 

Well maybe that is a little bit dramatic but it is now only 44 days until my exhibition with Helen Conway opens at The World of Glass in St Helens. And only 37 days until we drop off the art work. Today Helen and I met with the curator Hannah to discuss layout and the minutia of things we need to do between now and then.

Getting the layout of the exhibition finalised is really important. Hannah and her team will hang the work and we wanted to be sure that we have the right number of pieces to fill this beautiful space. Turns out we can include an extra 4 metres of wall without crowding the space. Good job I made more pieces than I thought I needed. It does however mean that I will need to correct the scaled 3D model I have made!

So my to do list for the next 37 days:

• Send out the remaining Preview Invites.
• Finish final quilt (the original piece was finished in December but I liked it so much that I submitted it to the European Quilt Triennial. So now I am making a replacement. A 135cm x 240cm replacement. Good job I work in series!).
• Cut, drill and label top and bottom battens for three large quilts.
• Make storage bags for each large quilt.
• Iron, de-lint and carefully roll three large quilts in tissue paper before storing in their bags.
• Add hanging mechanism and mirror plates to 20 small pieces stretched over canvas.
• Wrap these 20 pieces in bubble wrap, find a box to store them in and print out a hanging plan for them.
• Decide whether 6 medium sized pieces currently stretched over canvas would actually look better framed (OK so maybe I should of thought of this earlier!)
• Add hanging mechanism and mirror plates to said 6 pieces.
• Wrap them in bubble wrap and print out a hanging plan for them.
• Collect 8 framed pieces from Manchester Custom Framing.
• These will come with hanging mechanisms and will be carefully wrapped so will just need a hanging plan printing.
• Make labels for everything. Sounds simple, takes forever to get them perfect.
• Get postcards printed ready for sale in the gallery.
• Decide whether to have limited edition prints for sale and get them printed.
• Get poster printed onto foam board for entrance to gallery (Helen is organising the design).
• Organise something for visitors to leave their details and comments on.
• Sort out drinks and nibbles for the preview with Helen.
• Decide what I will wear (this is the item that stresses me out most!).

Easy!

It has been a quiet year for submitting work as everything I do is focussed on my two exhibitions in 2018 so it was very nice to be able to submit an older piece to Quilt-Art-Quilt. And even nicer to be selected! Ruins 1 will be travelling to Auburn, New York for the exhibition at the Schweinfurth Art Centre. Exhibition dates are 28th October to 7th January.

I wish there were more opportunities to show pieces in more than one exhibition. Like every artist I would like to sell more of my work but the reality is that a lot of pieces just get stored away indefinitely after one public outing. Which seems a shame.

This week I have also resumed my 100 (week) day challenge working on small art for 2 hours each week day evening. It has been a good first week back - I managed 2 hours every evening except on Thursday where I managed 3 hours. I spent most of that time finishing the 20 small Canal Street pieces. Each is 8 x 8 inches and stretched over canvas. I'm now working on the 12 x 30 inch Kilns pieces. Busy, busy, busy!

I've completed 35 days / 7 weeks of my challenge and I'm really happy with my output but it still feels like hard work making myself go to the studio some evenings.

Today I have spent 6 hours at my sewing machine sewing hundreds of parallel lines on my latest large scale Ruins piece. And I have enjoyed every minute of it. Tomorrow evening I will be stitching parallel lines on the last of the small Canal Street pieces for next years exhibition and it will feel like a chore. Same process but on very different scales. I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me that my heart still wants to work BIG. But those small scale pieces are necessary - if only because they are more affordable. So I will keep going. Maybe when I get to 100 hundred days I will have fallen in love with working small ....

• Day 26 - 1 1/4 hours making thermofax screens.
• Day 27 - 2 1/2 hours finishing thermofax screens and starting Fragments pieces.
• Day 28 - 2 3/4 hours spent collaging 6 Fragments pieces ready for stitch.
• Day 29 - was out in the evening with the day job but still managed 1 1/2 hours - go Leah!
• Day 30 - Oops, had to spend two hours labelling and packing quilts to send to Festival of Quilts.
• Day 31 - 1 hour spent on layouts for the exhibition at World of Glass (I have more than enough small pieces, yes!) and 1 hour spent stitching.
• Day 32 - 2 hours stitchin'
• Day 33 - didn't happen, hot and stuff day so gave in to the temptation that is ice cream and a good book.
• Day 34 - 2 1/2 hours stitch'
• Day 35 - 2 1/2 hours stitching and adding little red accents to the Fragments pieces.

When I visit a gallery I don't tend to read the artist's statement until after I have looked at their work. I like to savour my own responses to a piece first. But I do read the title because it provides a starting place for my response. So naming my own work is important to me and the subject of many hours contemplation. And the subject of regular discussion amongst fellow artists and on social media.

Naming a series is an even bigger decision because you have to live with it longer. I am not a sketchbook person. All my ideas have a long gestation period in my head before I let them loose on dye and cloth. The titles of my first two series, Hidden Messages and Ruins, became fixed right at the beginning of that process. In Hidden Messages I wanted to develop a series of works around censorship in modern day China. In Ruins I wanted to develop a series of works around abandoned and ruined buildings. The titles were obvious to me and still feel just right. And in both cases I was happy to number the works rather than give each piece it's own subtitle.

I gave my third series a working title of Storm / Still as that seemed appropriate to the emotional rollercoaster I was on at the time. Although I numbered the early works they were either 'Storm' or they were 'Still' and each piece required it's own subtitle. The series name became fixed when I added a page to my website. Strangely I named the colour family that I developed for this series 'Dunure' (after my favourite place in the whole world after my studio). And even named a few small pieces Dunure. But I never thought to call the whole series Dunure and with hindsight I wish I had. Storm / Still feels clumsy to me now and may be one of the reasons that I don't think I will produce more in this series.

So to today. For my exhibitions next year I am working on three series each focussed on industrial and urban landscapes. One part will be more pieces in my Ruins series. Another part will be on buildings and structures still in use today that shape our landscape but are invisible to most. This series has had the working title View. The inidividual pieces will all need their own subtitles as there are site specific. So far I have made one large piece (above) and am in the process of making a series of small works called Canal Street 1, 2, 3 etc. The working title of View is no longer working for me. Instead I am officially naming the series Structures. Yes it has been used by many, many artists but it is the perfect title for what has inspired my work.

The other series is inspired by industries and iconic structures that no longer exist. I already know the subtitle of the large scale piece that is gestating in my head but I'm stuck on titles for the series of small works I am currently making based in the Bold Colliery near St Helens. And I am definitely stuck on a title for the series. I have had a working series title of Gone but that doesn't even work as a working title. I have been puzzling over this all week. I almost settled on Relics. But then I had a 'duh' moment.

The title of the exhibition in St Helens is TRACES. My inspiration is those structures that have left TRACES in our memory. No brainer! This new series is now officially called Traces.

The title of the exhibition in Stockport is FRAGMENTS. The small works are just that - they are small FRAGMENTS of a much bigger series. The series of small works is now officially called Fragments.

And now I need a long lie down in a dark room ....

After four really productive weeks of making small art I have had a disappointing week; struggling to get any level of momentum. I spent the week as I planned to - researching and creating cloth for the third string of work that I will exhibit next year. The inspiration comes from those industries, and those structures, that no longer exist - the coal mining industry around St Helens, Lancashire being a great example. I wasn't working completely from scratch. I have learnt from a couple of failed attempts at printing cloth so I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to achieve and how. And I'd already found a great resource on line - the Sutton Beauty and Heritage site. But I didn't know if it would all come together. I really needed to lock myself in the studio for a whole weekend to completely immerse myself in the process. Knowing that, at most, I could only work for 3 hours in an evening was enough of a limitation that it throw me. And then there was the start of major building work on our home - likely to be a massive distraction for the next couple of months. Here is what I achieved:

• Day 21 - at home all day because of builders I actually spent about 6 hours in the studio but only 1 hour on small art. Not sure what happened to the other 5 hours!
• Day 22 - 1.5 hours researching and making thermofax screens
• Day 23 - 2 hours - took a break from the new work and instead stitched Kilns 4.
• Day 24 - 2 hours printing and experimenting with discharge.
• Day 25 - a scant 1 hour washing and ironing fabrics

Only 7.5 hours in total. I don't have the luxury of time with two exhibitions in the first half of next year so cannot afford weeks like this! So this weekend I focussed on getting my act together / pulling my finger out / got down off the fence and finally made some decisions on this series! The results are rather pale and ethereal. I have finished a piece and put it into a picture frame I had in the studio. It didn't photograph very well and the mountboard is the wrong shade of white but it actually looks rather lovely. Certainly lovely enough to make more. Which is what I will be doing in the 6th week of my 100 (week) day challenge.

It was exciting and scary news time this week when Helen Conway and I got dates for the two shows we are working towards in 2018. The first one, at Gallery One, World of Glass, St Helens will run from Saturday 17th March until Friday 4th May. No problem. I'm on track to have the work I need for this show completed by the end of December.

The second exhibition will be at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery. We had been expecting an exhibition in the Autumn of 2018. And it might still be in the Autumn but it is much more likely to be late May and June. And the Gallery is huge!

Time to ramp up production. My 100 (week) day challenge was aimed at making 25 - 30 small works of art for the St Helens show. I now need to make 50+ pieces. And I need to complete the big pieces for St Helens by the end of November. Gulp!!

But this is where working in series really pays dividends. When I have an idea that I hope will evolve into a series I invest many, many hours in developing the colours, developing and printing the fabrics, and sampling to establish the basic rules of construction. Sometimes that investment just doesn't work out but when it does it is wonderful. Because then I can just focus on making. Ideas evolve as I move from working on one piece to the next but I know that they are going to 'work' as they are built on a good foundation.

The next 9 months or so are going to be hard work. I had hoped to have a piece ready to enter next years European Quilt Triennial but this looks unlikely. I was planning on rebuilding my website but maybe I'll need to pay someone to do it for me. Thankfully with my studio being at the bottom of our garden my family won't forget what I look like. Although I may lock the door if they interupt too often.....

The 20th bienniel Quilt National opens today at the Dairy Barn Arts Centre in Ohio, US. And I am incredibly proud that one of my quilts - Ruins 7 - is amongst the 85 quilts selected this year.

Ruins 7 is part of my series that explores what happens to buildings when we stop using them, when we leave them behind. We stop using buildings for many reasons. This piece references buildings and cities destroyed by war.

It is the first time I have entered Quilt National and really didn't think I stood a chance so never even considered making the journey to the US for the opening. Which is a shame because I hadn't realised just how many activities are organised for the selected artists; opportunities to see behind the scenes, to meet fellow artists, to give workshops and to sell other works through the Dairy Barn shop. So there is my challenge for future Quilt National - get selected again AND find the time / money to attend the opening!