…. is the working title of the quilt I’ve been working on over the last week or so. It is a new piece in my Cadence series and will probably be titled Cadence 8 once it is finished. It is a piece inspired by those days when my carefully constructed oasis of calm, steady creativity is disrupted by unexpected but often petty interruptions (must remember to lock the studio door from the inside / turn off my phones), by stuff not working properly (I swear that my beloved sewing machine knows when to irritate me!) and by life just getting in the way. The type of day when I might say something a bit stronger than flamin’ nora.

I’m guessing you know what I mean …..

And so this quilt. It has the same main elements as Cadence 7 but instead of a calm, narrow band of colour running along the centre it is interrupted by a spiky band of colour that is the focal point of the quilt. It is a long way from finished but I thought that I’d share a few work in progress photos.

Although I’ve been enjoying some gaps between workshops this month my October and November are crazy busy. Which means that it will be December before I can finish the quilt. Which is frustrating as ideas for Cadence 9 are already forming in my head. But that’s life!

Taming The Wilderness - detail

Or, in my case, make a quilt!

I should be in the middle of a busy teaching schedule here in the studio but I’ve find myself with two ‘empty’ weeks. I have been isolating for the last week and have had to cancel next weeks workshop due to students having problems.

Why isolating? Well it’s a bit complicated. Our grandson lives part time with us and his dad, our son Joe, and part time with his mum and her parents. Last weekend a person in his mums household tested positive for Covid so everyone in the household was contacted by track and trace and told to isolate. Including our grandson who had just switched to our house and so was told to spend his isolation period with us. Isolation is tough on adults and would be totally cruel on an 11 year old who is pretty worried and upset. So we have been isolating as a household …. hence I had to cancel the workshop. The students have been wonderfully understanding, the family member with Covid has recovered and we’ve all been testing negative on our daily lateral flow tests. Panic over.

Some people might see two ‘empty’ weeks as an opportunity to relax, chill out, watch some TV etc etc. Hmmm …. so I have done a little bit of that but I just don’t have it in me to not find something ‘productive’ to fill the gap. Hence the quilt. It’s only a little one (30cm by 196cm high) but I’m rather pleased with it. I’ve called it Taming The Wilderness (detail above) and I will be entering it into a Contemporary Quilt exhibition called ‘Uncharted’. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know that I work in series and don’t make my quilts with entry to themed exhibition in mind. But if the theme fits with a series that I’m working on then I will make a piece that fits a specific size requirement. Which is the case with this one.

My current series is called Cadence and is about the joy of process; the joy of making. I’m using my favourite colours and my favourite techniques …. I’m making comfort art in an uncertain world. Cadence is a musical term and I used a specific type of cadence to determine the layout of Cadence 7 and plan to use another type of cadence for my next ‘big’ quilt. So musical connections are generally buzzing around in my head.

During the pandemic I have found myself listening to more and more instrumental CDs and have been playing a lot of music by a band called Explosions In The Sky. One of their CDs that I brought a couple of months ago is called The Wilderness. It has the most fabulous cover art by visual artist Jacob van Loon that I could loose myself in for hours. In my head Uncharted = Wilderness = my new quilt. The jurors will probably consider the connection too tenuous but making this quilt has filled my empty week and made me happy.

And happy is good.

Taming The Wilderness (detail of backface)

Another week has passed and I’m feeling really positive about the piece I’m working on! Having got a lovely stack of breakdown printed fabric I spent a couple of hours cutting about half of the fabric into long strips. I cut them in three widths - 2.5inch, 1.5inch and 1inch - without thinking about where the cut landed on the fabric. I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t cherry pick which fabrics to use. The beauty of breakdown printed fabric is the density of mark you get and the fabulous combinations of colour and mark you get when selecting fabric and using fabric in a random way.

I then divided my pile of cut strips into two groups - a darker value group and a lighter value group - albeit a few of the strips sort of sat in the middle and could have gone in either group. And then the real fun began! I took the pile of darker value fabrics, opened up the strips and jumbled them all together. I closed my eyes and started plucking strips from the pile at random. I pinned the strips to my design wall in the order I picked them. I wanted the finished quilt to be about three metres long so needed about 4.5 metres of strips - good job I have a big design wall.

Next I inserted paler sections of fabric of varying length into each strip. Although I selected the fabric pieces at random I based the length of each insertion on a short musical score of twelve notes. The earlier quilts in this new Cadence series were constructed using ‘pleasing’ shapes with no intent other than to enjoy the process of making. But having regained my creative confidence I wanted to link this new piece to ‘cadence’, in this case a musical cadence. Because the width of the strips varied the repeat pattern was not immediately obvious but I know its there.

It is always very tempting at this stage to do some ‘tweaking’; swapping out bits of fabric that maybe don’t have a lot of interesting marks on them or switching fabrics around to avoid two strips cut from the same fabric sitting side by side. But it is often these ‘imperfections’ that pop and create interest in the finished quilt so I resisted temptation and moved onto to constructing the quilt.

Because my sewing machine only has a 7 inch throat I construct large quilts in two halves and put them together as late in the stitching and quilting process as possible. I prepared two pieces of backing fabric and wadding, using basting spray to attach the wadding to the backing fabric. And then I used a stitch and flip method to add my strips, in order, to the wadding / backing. I love this method of construction because it eliminates the basting process .. I am making my ‘quilt sandwich’ as I join the strips. But also because it allows me to keep the long edges of all my strips parallel satisfying the control freak in me! In the photos below you can see that I use a sharpie to draw parallel lines, 2 inches apart, on my wadding. In my Ruins quilts all my strips were 2.5inches wide so each raw long edge lined up with a drawn line. In these Cadence quilts the strip width varies but I can still use the drawn lines as a guide. And so I have spent three days this week stitching and flipping! And as I’ve been sewing I’ve been thinking about the quilting and thinking about the orientation of the finished piece …. wondering what it would look like turned through 90 degrees?

Being an artist is more than just making art. At least it is for me as I believe showing work to others is an important part of calling myself an artist with a capital A. In a perfect world exhibition organisers, curators and galleries would somehow know that I had just finished a piece of fantastic art and would be beating down my door to get at it …..

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that and so a significant part of most artists life is self-promotion, filling out calls for entry, submitting exhibition proposals and, if successful, shipping pieces across the world (which is increasingly difficult and worthy of a post in itself). As you may have noticed I’m pretty active on the self promotion front but I have to admit that I’ve let some things drift whilst I have focussed on teaching and writing.

Before I got distracted I kept a file of potential ‘calls for entry’ that looked at least 18 months ahead so that I could identify ‘targets’ and work to have suitable quilts ready for specific dates. I work in series and have found trying to respond to other peoples themes rather disappointing. I discard many opportunities to exhibit because of that and only keep a list of those that don’t have specific themes or have themes, such as ‘Structures’ that might fit with my work. Or I did. Having a few scraps of paper in a random pile does not count as a proper list. I have put that right and now have a well organised file of ‘calls for entry’. Most are in the quilt world but I’ve also decided that now is the time to venture out in the bigger textile world. Having a list doesn’t mean success. The more you submit work, the more rejections you get. But, as the saying goes, you have to be in it to win it’!

The other thing I used to be very disciplined about was submitting proposals for exhibition, either on my own or with others. Curators are often working one or two years ahead. Some artists prepare a collection of work and then submit proposals but most, myself included, submit proposals when they only have ‘work in progress’ and maybe one or two finished pieces. I haven’t done that for a long time and I could kick myself as there is almost certainly a back log due to Covid. And the success rate is even lower than ‘calls for entry’. I don’t have anything in the pipeline and realistically can’t expect to having a solo exhibition for at least two or three years. Ho hum!!

The good news though is that I am now feeling very happy with the work that I’m creating. To the extent that I’ve submitted a couple of pieces to a couple of calls for entry. I can’t share images of the full quilts but have included a photo of the detail in one piece above. And, more importantly, I know that I have a new series. By that I mean that I have an inspiration / set of ideas that has enough breadth and has engaged me so deeply that I know I can produce more pieces of art exploring the same theme. I am calling this new series Cadence as its inspiration has come from the regular and repeated process of making breakdown screens, printing fabric, washing fabric, cutting fabric, arranging and piecing fabric, layering and stitching. And because I think it is a lovely word.

Feeling connected to my process again is wonderful and means that I have the confidence to write new proposals for exhibition. To look further ahead on days when the present is so dark. So watch this space!

Last time I wrote about my sense of disconnection from my art and I’d like to thank everyone who got in touch. Your support, and knowing that many of you share my sense of disconnection, really helps. This pandemic has turned our worlds upside down in so many ways but I cannot blame my lack of connection to my art on the pandemic alone. As I wrote before there were fissures already there, I think, from the changes in my life over recent years.

So how do I reconnect? There are lots of things I could try. I could take a workshop and learn a new technique in the hope that it sparks something. I could pick a call for entry with a set theme and a deadline and force myself to work on it just to be doing something, again in the hope it sparks something. Or I could start some form of daily practice, maybe something that is outside my ‘comfort zone’ such as sketching. These methods work really well for some people but I know myself and I know that these ideas won’t work for me. I’ve worked into sketchbooks and worked to other peoples themes often enough to recognise that they are not for me.

Instead I have spent time looking back and thinking about what has worked really well for me in the past. I don’t want to reinvent myself. I am not questioning the processes I have used in the past. I am looking for new inspiration that is a better fit with my life today. I know from experience that I do not make good art if I have a great idea and start working on it straightaway. The two quilts I made in April are a good example of this. I also know that my ideas rattle around in my head and evolve best when I’m busy printing and stitching - I really don’t do sitting around waiting for the muse!

Which is a bit of a conundrum. So I have stopped thinking about finding new inspiration. Instead I am trusting my process and trying to create abstract pieces that I can fall in love with. Some may say that this is taking the easy option but honestly now is not the right time for me to work on pieces with deep meaning. I am being kind to myself. I have picked a colour family to work with that is rather lovely. I have used breakdown printing to create a palette of fabrics. I am using simple compositions, based on different width strips and simple shapes, to create a series of full sized quilts. And I’m spending many, many hours sat at my machine stitching.

Some of the fabrics I have printed so far haven’t worked and some of the compositions I’ve played with haven’t made it off my design wall. Over the last few weeks I have finished one quilt that is boring and have stopped working on another piece part way through quilting. But I am slowly working towards pieces that are interesting. I haven’t got to the ‘wow’ moment but I will keep going. I don’t know where I will end up. I may end up with a successful series of abstract pieces. Or I may start thinking about a new source of inspiration that eventually leads to new work and end up throwing these pieces away. I feel that the process I am going through needs to be a private one so I’m not going to share images until I know which way this is going. Some of you may shudder at the idea of quilts going in the bin but I see this as an investment in me. A necessary investment. And a positive focus at the end of a very difficult year.

May I take a moment to wish each of you a peaceful Christmas in which you can find moments of happiness.

All my love, Leah

To say 2020 hasn’t gone as planned would be a bit of an understatement. At the beginning of this year my focus was on making art and on teaching. I had intentionally delayed plans to grow my online shop and to write my second book as I wanted to slow down a bit after a hectic 2019 and spend more time with my family.

But in March everything changed. With no income from teaching I quickly switched gears and spent time developing my online shop. Like many people I really struggled to focus on anything but found comfort in printing fabric to sell.

As my focus returned I decided to take a few weeks ‘off’ to make art. The pieces that I had been working on before March felt completely irrelevant. I had zero desire to work on that series so, like many other artists, I decided to use my response to the corona virus as my inspiration. I followed my usual creative process - I chose my colours first then printed fabric before thinking about composition. Whilst I enjoyed the process the two quilts I created were a bit disappointing. In fact one of them is just plain ugly. Under normal times I would have thrown those in the bin and kept going. I felt frustrated but didn’t have the emotional strength to figure out why they weren’t ‘right’.

Instead I threw myself into writing my second book. I took breaks to teach when restrictions allowed but I can honestly say that I stopped thinking about making art. I did enter a quilt I had made at the beginning of the year into several juried exhibitions but it was rejected over and over again. Normally this would really upset me but it didn’t. I like the quilt and would happily hang it on a wall in my home but just don’t feel as connected to it as I do my earlier work.

Eventually the book was finished. Having seriously over worked myself I was forced to really slow down for a few weeks. My mind turned to making art. And I realised that I have lost my way. I have lost the sense of connection with my work and I have lost the habit of making art. My life has changed completely in recent years. I no longer work in industry, based in an old cotton mill, surrounded by heavy machinery. I work in my studio. I no longer travel around the world with my job. Even before the pandemic I barely travelled anywhere and now I spend 99% of my time inside the boundaries of our property. I no longer have a clean separation between my art and my day job. My art is, or at least should be, part of my day job.

When I changed career and started teaching it was so that I could combine being an artist, cope with the increasing care responsibilities I have and still pay the bills. I was adamant that I wanted to be an artist who taught rather than a teacher who makes the odd bit of art. It was inevitable that there would be periods when my focus was 100% on growing my teaching practice and writing books but I failed to recognise that the connection I felt to my art was in part driven by the fact that previously I worked on my art everyday not in chunks of a week here and a week there.

Local restrictions currently prevent me teaching and I fear that this will continue into the new year. I could spend this time starting my next book, creating more thermofax designs for my shop, or developing online workshops but I’m not. I’m spending the time looking inwards, trying to reconnect with my art and figuring out how I sustain this once I am able to teach.

I will write about this in more detail next time but I will share something I have done that is helping me. It is a little thing but I have, temporarily, removed the big plastic ‘Covid safe’ screens from the studio and have rearranged the tables. Whilst those screens are necessary they just make me want to cry. By removing them I feel like I am reclaiming my creative space. A little step towards reconnecting.

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!

It has been a better week. Not out there - out there the infection rate and death toll is still too high and our politicians …. well, don’t get me started!

But here in the Higgins household, in my studio, in my head and in my heart it has been a better week. Thanks in no small part to the support and generosity of this wonderful textile community. There has been the odd ‘moment’ but most days I have put in some solid work on my next book and on my latest quilt.

It is still too early to say too much about the book. I’ve got about a third the words out of my head and in rough draft and I have a solid outline for the remainder. The list of samples I need to make, and processes I need to break down and photograph is looking a bit daunting at the moment. But if I can work at a steady pass I hope to have the book ready by the end of the summer.

I have been working at the computer each morning and afternoon but by about 4pm my brain starts leaking out my ears and I need to switch to something less challenging. And this week that activity has been quilting the second piece in what I guess I should call my Covid 19 series. I wonder how many Covid series are being worked on by artists around the world right now? I have finished the quilting on both pieces, trimmed them to the same size and added facing strips. I just need to sew those strips down and they will be ready to photograph. I think the two pieces would best be described as companion pieces as they both relate to the same day in April. I don’t think they work as a diptych because of the shift in scale between the two. I haven’t decided which juried exhibition to enter them into yet so I’m only showing a shot of some detail right now. Once they have been rejected (or more hopefully accepted) I will be free to share them with you!

Tomorrow should have been my first day teaching my 5 day Breakdown Your Palette workshop this year. It is so sad not to be welcoming new students into the studio but life is what it is and we just have to get on with it. But I am not going to miss out completely. My post 4pm, less challenging activity this next week is going to be breakdown printing fabric for sale on my website. My week will be full of colour!

As always, I hope you and yours are still OK, stay well. Leah

I think I’ve got my artistic mojo back! Time will tell if anybody else agrees but right now I am feeling in a good place. I have spent the last week or so trying to cut out all the distractions, trying to quiet all those negative, anxious thoughts and instead focus on creating. Of course the outside world has continued to be a source of anxiety and fear so I decided to be kind to myself and set aside pushing any boundaries until a happier time.

Instead I took two decisions upfront. Firstly I decided to work with a colour family I developed several years ago and used in my Dunure series of works. At the time our oldest son was in a very dark place and life was the hardest we have ever known. The colour palette was inspired by the scrubby beach at Dunure, Scotland on a grey, stormy November day and the series was a reflection of the effect of place on my mental well being. I had hoped that I would never return to this series and this colour palette but here we are.

Secondly I decided to work with circles and specifically broken or fragmented circles. I tend to call my work ‘abstract’ but the reality is that I like to make marks that relate to my inspiration. Inspiration seems like the wrong word in this case but of course this new work is a response to the virus. Small envelopes of protein that invade our bodies, multiple and corrupt our cells. That separate us from our loved ones.

Of course I have been using breakdown printing to create my fabrics - my studio equivalent of comfort eating. And I have been using bondaweb to fuse fabrics together as my patience levels are not high enough to be piecing curved edges right now. But I think I am getting somewhere. And I’m going to stick at it for a while.

Which means no new fabric packs on the website for another week - sorry.

Stay safe, stay well, Leah