After multiple attempts I am now happy with my new colour family. I am calling it 'traces' as I'm hoping to use it to create a new body of work based on iconic industrial buildings that no longer exist. I spent my childhood summers staying with my grandparents in a small village north of Nottingham. The area was criss-crossed with coal seams and every journey took us past pit heads. These buildings don't exist anymore but I bet most people my age who spent time in the north of England know exactly what I am thinking off.

I used magenta dye as one of the starting colours as an ironic reference to the way we tend to look at the past through 'rose tinted glasses'. Although many people mourned the loss of community when the coal industry declined I don't think anybody could remember working conditions in the pits or the polution in the surrounding areas through rose tinted glasses hence I have blended the magenta with black to the point where the colour just tips over from pink to purple. I particularly like the paler colours in the family.

Now that the colour family is fixed I've started work on creating the palette of fabrics. This could take several months as my ideas tend to evolve gradually as I work at the bench. However the way I used breakdown printing in my Still / Storm series gave results that were similar to what I have in mind for this new series. So this is where I'm starting.

The new Etcetera exhibition opens at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery this Saturday and runs to 15th October. There is a preview between 7 and 9pm tomorrow (Friday 9th) if you are in the area and want to stop by.

I am showing these pieces from my Hidden Message series. There are four small tiles stretched over canvas and two quilts. Hidden Message was the first time that I intentionally decided to create a series of pieces from one source of inspiration. It has been an interesting learning curve - my starting point came from trips to Shanghai and the really bizarre cultural conflict between modern, urban China and it's one-party politics. My initial ideas involved bright colours, teapots, brand names and neon advertising signs. I made one piece, called No Time for Tea, which I loved but felt absolutely no desire to progress.

Instead I switched to a complex, muted colour family, broken fragments of skyscrapers and fabrics printed with words associated with censorship. I created two large pieces. Hidden Message 2 was originally 12 separate sections stitched onto a fabric background and Hidden Message 3 was originally 4 banners joined at the top. Both of these pieces were eventually cut into separate tiles, stretched over canvas and shown in the Etcetera exhibition at Ryedale Folk Museum earlier this year.

I kept working in this complex colourway eventually creating the Hidden Message Skyscrapers set of 8 panels. But I also decided to try out the fragmented structure and patterns in a restricted colour palette of shades of grey and red. The resulting pieces have always felt like odd-balls. They just don't 'work' if I put them alongside other pieces from the series. At one stage I was considering throwing them away but I'm glad I didn't. The exhibition in Stockport has given me the opportunity to hang them together and to assess them away from the other pieces in the series. They are their own little mini-series!

Over the last couple of years I have definitely found my 'voice'. Or my 'visual style'. Or whatever you want to call that sense of confidence that comes from developing a set of processes (or studio practice) that transforms ideas into finished pieces that are recognisably 'me'. I can point to three things that helped - making a conscious decision to work in series, attending a Colour Studies course with Leslie Morgan and moving into my purpose built studio.

I currently have two 'active' series. The Ruins series which has given me so much success and the Still / Storm series which still feels in it's infancy. In both cases I started by developing a colour palette then developed a set of printed and / or dyed fabrics. I collage and stitch samples during which ideas for 'full sized' pieces start to flow. Some ideas are very vague and require more sampling. Other ideas pop up fully formed. And demanding attention. Like the piece I am working on now.

I keep a list of potential 'calls for entry', particularly those without a theme or size restrictions. But I let the work itself dictate what size and even what form my finished pieces will take. And I no longer give in to the temptation to create 'one-offs' to fit a specific call for entry. This limits where I might place my work but sometimes there is a really good match between my work and a particular call. Such as the current SAQA 'Layered Voices' call. The piece is going to be 4 metre long strip hung such that the bottom section is draped and partially hidden on the floor. It will be double sided. And stitched with hundreds and hundreds of parallel lines. And every end of thread will be carefully sewn in. So shouted my voice!

Unfortunately my voice does not care that the call ends on 30th September and that I start a new day job on the 12th. Or that we are hanging the next Etcetera exhibition at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery this week. Ho hum. Better get back to my sewing machine!

I'm in the final stages of making Ruins 7. Well I think I am. I need to stitch on facings and get it hung up somewhere so I can decide if it needs more stitch or not. Which presents a bit of a challenge as it is taller than the height of my studio. This will take a few days to sort out. So what should I do now? I have been planning on going back to my Storm / Still series to (try to) make a piece for the SAQA call for entry 'Layered Voices'. Up until now my ideas were all pretty vague and somewhat grandiose. But today I had a light bulb moment thanks to fellow Etcetera member Linda Bilsborrow. Following a discussion about her work I happened to glance at a small sample that was pinned to my Storm / Still design wall .... and flash! Off went that elusive light bulb!

I'm really lucky to have several design walls so I can keep lots of ideas and samples pinned up. Most of that space has been filled with Ruins stuff for the last few months but I kept some photos of Dunure beach and stitched samples visible - would I have had that light bulb moment if everything was tucked away?

And now that I have a good idea of how to procede I have rearranged my design walls to keep me focussed. On one wall I have pinned the sample and some fabrics that I have already printed. I will add to this wall as I print more pieces. On another wall I have pinned up more photos of Dunure - I can look at these and remember what I felt sat on that beach and what I'm trying to convey in my work. And I have changed the drop cloth on my big print bench from the unmarked one that signifies I am in a composition and stitching phase to one with lots of lovely residual marks from previous printing sessions. Not as quick as flipping a switch but it has the same effect!

I finished this piece several weeks ago but have only just hung and photographed it. It is quite different to the earlier pieces in the Ruins series and I am not yet sure whether that is different in a good way. For better or for worse the quilt is now on its way to Festival of Quilts where it will be shown in the Art Quilt section. Because it is so wide I am hoping it will get hung on a white wall rather than on the traditional quilt stands. I think some of the impact will be lost if the lighting isn't great but that is a risk I am willing to take to get my work out there! Wherever there is!

A word of warning before I start - those you know me might want to sit down.

I have now finished the background stitching on Ruins 7. It is big; a massive 5 square metres. Which equates to hundreds of parallel lines of stitching achieved by spending hours and hours at my sewing machine. And it looks great - well worth the investment I have made in it so far.

I wanted to do something a little different with this piece and had, in my mind, stitched silhouettes of ruined, bombed out buildings. I went on-line to get some images to work from. Sadly there are far too many images out there - from London and Dresden in the second World War to Aleppo today. I started by sketching in a notebook but could get no sense of scale. So I decided to draw out the full sized design. Cue lots of hours drawing, tearing up paper and drawing again until I was sort of happy. I draw onto blank newsprint paper as I know it tears easily and thought I could pin it to the quilt and stitch through.

I thought wrong. Trying to manhandle the quilt and paper on my sewing machine was horrendous. If I had a swear box in the studio I could have paid my mortgage off!! I thought long and hard about my options …. And decided to draw the design directly onto the quilt. And not with a pencil (which wouldn't really show up) or with a water soluble marker pen (as I have no intention of letting the piece near water). I decided to use a black permanent marker pen. Yeaks!!

I am using free machine quilting in a black thread to 'etch' over the lines so most of the marks should be hidden. Assuming I don't make a mistake …… Is that brave or really stupid?