Just a quick post to let you know that I have loaded some more Wonky Print Inspiration Packs onto my online shop. Seven new colour combinations this time. I have already made a bunch of breakdown screens in lots of different colours and will be printing these soon. However I have decided to pause for a moment, and to ‘go quiet’ on social media for a few days whilst I try and get my artistic mojo back. I have been really struggling and honestly don’t want to work on my most recent series but I have some thoughts about how I might respond to this strange and frightening world we find ourselves in. These thoughts may just produce a lot of rubbish fabric and go nowhere but I won’t know until I try.

So I will be back in a bit … either with news of exciting new work … or with some more inspiration packs! Until then, stay well and stay creative, Leah

I like structure in my life. I like to timetable my days based around multiple projects with multiple deadlines. I organise, I prioritise, I like writing lists and I love ticking boxes. If there is a problem I like finding a solution. And yes, I am a control freak.

Well life couldn't feel more out of control than it does right now. Teaching schedule in the bin. Trips, events and appointments cancelled. Running out of pasta. Isolating to keep my husband safe. No football. Constant level of anxiety. Haven't had a good night sleep in weeks. And a sadness that creeps up on me in the quiet moments.

Sound familiar? I wallowed in self pity for a while but got bored. I've watched more TV, tried to relax and read a book, lost myself in a jigsaw for a bit, spent more time cooking (and eating) etc. But I am just not very good at 'taking time off'. I need to be busy. I need to find some boxes to tick.

Of course I could clean the oven. Thankfully things haven't got that desperate yet. Luckily I have my studio at the end of the garden, serious amounts of fabric, dyes etc and now I have lots of time to work on stuff. But what type of stuff? Before this awful crisis hit I was totally fired up about my new series of quilts. I was longing to free up some days to finish the second piece in the series and to start printing fabric for the subsequent two pieces. But now the work, expressing my concern about the changing nature of our democracy seems rather irrelevant. Even my usually steely determination cannot get me past this unexpected and unwanted creative block.

But I have to be doing something. So I have done one thing that I  had been wanting to do for a while. I have, at long last, added thermofax screens, dyes, textile inks etc to my webshop. Ticked a big box there! And I have started to do something that I had told myself I wouldn't do. I have started printing fabric to sell. Not that there is anything wrong with that but when I decided to pay my bills by teaching and making art I made myself a promise that I would focus on those two things and on writing books. And that I would only sell the fabrics that I generated as part of teaching and demonstrating.

But times change. I have temporarily lost my artistic mojo; lost my main source of income (teaching) and my brain is too distracted (yet) to work on my next book. So printing fabric and making up packs to sell is ticking boxes. It is keeping me busy, giving me some income, giving my life structure and helping me cope.

It is also quietly satisfying. There are no big light bulb creative breakthroughs that I might get if I was working on my art but I find joy in the process. And we all need some joy right now.

However you are doing it I hope that you have all found ways to make this strange and frightening world more bearable. Stay well, Leah

Well maybe not quite as busy as 2019! A full teaching schedule, writing and publishing my first book, an absolutely amazing solo gallery at Festival of Quilts and unexpected drama on the home front meant 2019 was a bit of a roller-coaster ride. No wonder that I have spent a lot of the Christmas break sleeping!

However I did get into the studio most days even if only for an hour or two and spent my time working on the first two full pieces in my new series. I have given the series a working title of ‘Democracy’. I could have called the series Brexit but I want to make pieces that express my broader concerns about politics, the proliferation of lies and fake news and the way our political leadership is changing. And although the individual quilts may reference events in the UK I hope they will resonated with people in other countries. Despite the rather gloomy subject matter I am thoroughly enjoying working on a series. And, as per usual, I am spending lots of time machine stitching straight lines!

But the holidays are over and it is back to work for me. 2020 got off to a flying start - yesterday I gave a talk to the Manchester Branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild. This was the first of 8 talks I’ll be giving this year and the first of 4 that I’ll be giving to branches of the Embroiderer’s Guild. I arrived with a car boot full of quilts including some of the pieces I’ve exhibited in recent years. And, as you will already know, most of my pieces are big. Really big. Which means that some are quite heavy. So a big thank you to the ladies and gentleman who volunteered to hold them up! The difference in scale between my work and some of the pieces being worked on in the room could not be greater.

I also took along some older quilts and some sketchbooks from the City & Guild’s Diploma I did with the lovely and talented Linda Kemshall many years ago. Whilst doing my diploma I figured out that if you work onto separate sheets rather than directly into a sketchbook you can choose what you share. And you can back engineer a lovely looking sketchbook after you have finished making a quilt. OK, so I learnt that you could cheat. But much, much more importantly I learnt that I didn’t need to work into sketchbooks to produce art. It might not have been the intention of the course but this learning was an big step forward for me.

As well as talks I have a full teaching schedule this year. Most of my classes for the first half of the year are sold out but I still have odd places on my Simply Screen Printing workshop and my Print Your Palette workshop. I will also be welcoming my first three guest tutors into the studio. The workshops with Alice Fox and Christine Chester are sold out but there is still one place left on Ruth Browns Books for Textile Artists.

I will be demonstrating at The Creative Craft shows in Glasgow and Birmingham in March and will have a stand at this summers Festival of Quilts. And I am delighted to have a gallery at the West Country Quilt and Textile Show in August. Phew! There was me thinking it wouldn’t be as busy as 2019!

Understanding and embracing your own creative process is incredibly powerful. It takes away that ‘where do I start moment’. It helps you ride out those days when everything you print looks like a disappointing fuzzy, mucky mess. It increases the chances of printing a fuzzy, mucky mess when that is just what you want. And it allows you to wrap yourself in the gentle warmth that comes from creating. Just what I need right now!

There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to creative process. It’s a deeply personal thing. How many articles have you seen that proclaim that working in a messy, chaotic studio increases creativity? I saw one this week and sighed (again). If you can work in a mess then why would you stop to tidy up? But if a mess distracts you then cleaning up before you move on doesn’t make you less creative. It means you understand your creative process. Some people like to work through their ideas thoroughly in a sketchbook, others just jump straight in and accept that they may make some ugly ducklings before they successfully transfer what is in their head to their cloth. Some artists like to complete one piece of work before starting another; others find it more productive to have multiple pieces on the go. We’re all different.

Those that have been reading this blog for a while will know that once the ideas rattling around in my head have reached ‘critical mass’ and are demanding to find expression I start by experimenting with colour. Once I think I have blended the right colours I print a few metres of fabric using marks that sort of fit with my ideas. I don’t really stress about what I actually print - I am using the process to decide if my colours are good. Colours which look OK as small squares scraped onto white fabric don’t always look OK when used in large areas alongside other colours. More often than not I will then adjust my colours and print some more fabric. In the series that I am currently developing I did this a couple of times before having a big rethink and starting again with a different colour family. My subject / inspiration is the current state of UK politics. Irrespective of where you stand politically this is a pretty dark and depressing subject so my initial colours featured drab blacks and brown colours. Hmmm. Turns out that I just can’t work with dark, depressing and drab colours. And why would I keep working on a series if I’m working with colours that make me miserable? Tortured artist? No thanks.

Fortunately I had found the right colours before our recent domestic hiccup. I don’t think I could have got back into the studio if I was making myself work with colours I didn’t like. Instead, with my colour family selected, I have been able to spend a few hours here and a few hours there printing cloth. I warmed up by just adding colour to cloth using an open screen and some thermofax screens I had already made using newspaper headings from the day after the illegal prorogation of parliament. As I printed I got more ideas. Using block text to create positive and negative shapes. Combing breakdown printing and text. Using my new Brother Scan N Cut to scale up and make stencils of scribbled patterns. Varying scale. Utilising different parts of my colour family to create ‘light’ and ‘dark’ cloth. Using different fabrics such as linen to introduce slightly different textures. Some pieces went through just one process but most had two or three layers of mark. I love every part of this process, even washing out my fabrics and washing up my screens. Happy hands, happy heart. Fabulous!

As I was printed I started to think about construction. I’m a piecer. Although I used wholecloth for my series inspired by coal mining, piecing is my comfort zone. And comfort zone feels good right now. I cut some different size apertures from paper to help me decide what size pieces to work with. I like the idea of letters, words and sentences being partially seen so opted for narrow, long pieces. I cut up about a quarter of each piece of fabric then laid the pieces out on my design table in a random way. No cherry picking allowed!

At this stage I often decide that I need to print more fabric - maybe to adjust the colour balance but not this time. Although I did think it needed the addition of a complimentary colour to help draw the eye in. I found a reel of red thread and experimented stitching letters and words onto some pieces. The text wasn’t visible enough but I loved the colour - a good, solid, socialist red! So I mixed some textile inks to match the thread colour and printed onto some of my ‘white’ fabric pieces. I still want to play around with this but decided to go ahead and stitch my fabrics together.

And I am really happy. I trusted my creative process and it has got me from white fabric to a layered sample that (just!) needs quilting. My lovely husband is doing well; I’m still tired but, once again, my studio and my art practice is helping my heal.

I had been warned that I might feel a little ‘flat’ after the roller coaster / adrenalin rush that was Festival of Quilts. If I was still living my old life and had had to return to the day job I think that would definitely have been the case. But luckily I’m not living that life. I’m living one in which I get to work in my studio every day - my idea of heaven! I’ve had lots of bits and bobs to do to prepare for upcoming workshops and events but have also spent lots of time thinking about ‘what next?’ for me as an artist.

Although I have been super busy making art in recent months the development work for those pieces was done some time ago. I developed my Ruins series in 2015. It was a breakthrough moment for me that came after months of work playing with colour and learning about breakdown printing. I started work on the paler pieces inspired by the destruction of the coal mining industry in 2017. Again the first quilt came after months of work learning how I could combine breakdown and discharge to create a very striped back palette. I’m pretty sure that I will make more pieces in both series that will be meaningful and, hopefully, worth exhibiting. But they won’t necessarily challenge me or help me develop as an artist.

The print series was developed last summer. But, if I am being honest with myself, it was rushed. The decision to start teaching and to write a book interrupted that process and I am not as happy with it as I could be. There are some pieces that I really like - Franklin Gothic Heavy (above) is the one I like most and I’m delighted to announce that it has been accepted into this years Quilt-Art-Quilt exhibition. But I think I need to take a step back and rethink. No idea what that will mean yet but I’m just going to play around with some of the fabrics and see what happens.

I also want to start work on a set of ideas, thoughts and emotions about politics, the media and censorship that have been rolling about in the dark recesses of my mind for some time. I have no idea how these ideas will be expressed on cloth but I do know how my ‘creative process’ tends to work so I’m going to set myself some ‘technical’ challenges to get started. Now that I have more time I want to learn more about dyeing and printing on fabrics other than cotton. I want to look at different dye systems. And I want to learn a lot more about the discharge process. The scientist in me will be very happy carrying out lots of experimentation over the coming months. And while my hands are busy my mind will, hopefully, make connections, ideas will find form and I will discover if they are interesting enough to sustain a series of new pieces.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about my upcoming solo gallery at this summers Festival of Quilts. I’ll be exhibiting new works from three connected series. The newest of the three is inspired by the evolution of the print and publishing industry as it has responded to changes in demand and in technology. As with all of my recent work the ideas evolved in my head and at the bench whilst I was busy working on other things - as I said last time I don’t sit round waiting for the muse! So here is the story of a series that I am calling ‘Print’.

Last summer I took a few days out from preparing my studio (and myself) for teaching to do some breakdown printing. I set myself the challenge of just using black thickened dye in a squeezy bottle to create lots of different grids. I had sort of started thinking about writing my first book and thought this would be a good starting point. I also wanted to create a small breakdown printed quilt to use on my stand at last summers Festival of Quilts. I wasn’t thinking ‘ART’ but as I started cutting into my printed fabrics I was started thinking about the print industry and my connections with it. I made a small quilt which I called Process Colour #1. And went shopping for some old wooden print blocks which I thought I might try to incorporate in ‘something’ … no firm ideas of what but wheels had started turning in my subconscious.

A couple of months later and everything seemed to come together in my head … In my old corporate life I was involved in printing tufted textiles on an industrial scale, in my art life I printed my own unique fabrics. I sometimes use thermofax screens which utilise old technology from the 1950’s. My daughter and her partner have long been involved in the self-publishing / zine movement (check out Good Press). I had spent the autumn trying to get my husband to throw out some very old Gestetner printing supplies 30 years after he used a Gestetner duplicator to print his own zines. And now I was going to self-publish my first book (Breakdown Your Palette). So many connections. And there is so much history when you look at the print and publishing industry. So many changes in technology. Wood block printing to movable type. Printing presses to lithography to inkjet and digital printing to 3D printing. The written word being accessible to the privileged few to mass publication to the growth of the internet and ebooks.

And so I spent another week printing more fabrics. Just using black thickened dye but incorporating embedded wooden print blocks with my grids. Playing with new ideas. Auditioning fabrics. Making a sample utilising thin strips. Promising but still not quite right.

All more fuel for my mind to mull over. At some point I decided that I would create pieces using the same ‘brick wall’ background as I wanted that connection with my Ruins series. And sampled this as a piece for my Cloth in Common group. In this quilt I stitched the word ‘offset’ on top of a background made using my breakdown printed fabric. Definitely going in the right direction. Which is just as well as I need to make pieces for the exhibition. In my next post I will share the process for making my first large scale piece in this new series. My ideas will continue to evolve as I make each piece …..

A very quick thank you to everyone who came to see me at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. And a quick hello to those of you who signed up to receive this blog by email!

My head is a tangle of new ideas inspired by the conversations I’ve had at the show and the responses to my stand. This is all still new to me and I have so much to learn. And so much that I want to do in the coming weeks and months. Watch this space but needless to say that it involves breakdown printing. It was also lovely to meet Alice Fox and Janet Gilbert who were demonstrating in the Art in Action space and to walk around the different galleries.

Exhausting but fun! And now I need to make up a batch of print paste ….

I’ve just finished setting up the studio for this weekends classes with my day a month Introduction to Surface Design students so it seemed like a great time to tell you about my new course - Creative Surface Design which starts in September 2019. I have developed the course for those of you who have had exposure to lots of different surface design techniques and have a head full of ideas but are not sure how to transfer ideas into finished cloth.

The course will be run over 5 weekends spread over an 8 month period. I’ve chosen this format rather than a day a month as being able to leave work on the bench and come back to it the next morning allows for deeper exploration of an idea; it allows you to take your time rather than hurrying to finish. Because I am ‘me’ the course will start with a focus on colour and the power of using a restricted colour set or family. There is a loose structure for each weekend but the exact content will be largely driven by the individual students. I’ll give demonstrations as needed but I am assuming a basic understanding of dyeing and printing techniques.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I’m not a ‘sketchbook’ type of person as I tend to work directly, intuitively onto fabric with a lot of my design process happening in my head. But I do keep a journal where I write down ideas, and importantly, where I critique my own work. I will be encouraging students on the Creative Surface Design course to keep some form of personal record - whatever form they are comfortable with - and will have a one to one review with each student each weekend to support them as they develop their ideas and their own way of working.

All the details are on my website. Or, maybe you can come see me at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, 22 to 25 November, stand TG626!

I have an itch. I can feel it growing inside of me, gaining momentum. It’s at the edge of my consciousness now whatever I’m doing. It needs scratching!

Yep, all the ideas about a new series of works on the printing and publishing industry that have been brewing in my head for weeks have started to come together. This is how I work. I don’t use sketchbooks when developing new ideas but I do like to have something pinned to my design wall or sat on my desk that is always there, in the corner of my eye, as I work on other things.

I started thinking about printing and how it has, as an industry, changed and continues to change when I printed some fabrics using simple grid based breakdown screens in July. I made a small quilt called Process Colour for my stand at Festival of Quilts expecting it to be a one-off. But I don’t think it’s going to be. Actually I know it isn’t going to be. I liked how the simplicity of a grid become complex it broke down. I liked printing in only black. I cut some thin strips of the printed fabrics. There is no text but they somehow remind me of newsprint. And so my mind has continued to churn ideas around.

I thought about introducing text on top of some of the fabrics using old wooden print blocks. I wasn’t sure how but I’ve had the blocks sat next to my computer for a while now and they have been the catalyst that has caused an ‘idea’ explosion in my head. I need to get the ideas out. I need to play. I need to print!