I am delighted that textile artist Helen Parrott will be teaching in my studio this spring but wanted to know a little bit more about her work and the course she will be teaching ‘Northern Landscapes and Hand Stitch’. So I asked Helen a few questions and hope that you enjoy reading her answers. She also sent some lovely images of her recent work and inspirations - eye candy on a somewhat bleak, cold winters day here in Northern England.

Q. What is it about the landscape surrounding your home in northern England that inspires your work?

Helen: There is great beauty and interest in so much of what is around me on several levels:

I moved north over 40 years ago and still find the landscape fascinating and so different to where I grew up in Cambridge. Initially it was the urban landscapes of mills, factories, terraced houses and grand Victorian buildings in places like Leeds and Manchester that excited my curiosity. I spent years walking the cities of the north seeking to understand what I was seeing and how it came to be and look that way. I moved uphill to the edge of Sheffield in the 2000s and that is when more rural landscapes became part of my daily life. I still love to walk to town along the Porter Valley will its long unused millponds and traces of previous industry.

At this altitude the landscape is constantly changing, sometimes from moment to moment, sometimes boldly, at other times the changes are very subtle. The light is often unstable, fleeting and beautiful. (Taking daylight photos of my work can be a real challenge at some times of year because the light is so unstable.)

The landscape around here has a deep history of human occupation over millennia. The traces of these peoples and their lives are still visible in the landscape in the present day. I find that sense of continuity and connection with people over time a powerful one. These feelings of connection and continuity have been helpful to me as we live through the pandemic and the changes it has brought to our lives.

I love the wide valley vistas, the stone walls and the tiny details of the plants and trees. They all feed into my visual and creative life and work.

Q. How might running the course in a more urban setting influence the students experience?

Helen: I hope that the urban location will be thought provoking for all of us and that we can explore the idea of ’north’ as part of the course. We will each have our own experiences and ideas to share so I look forward to a lively conversation. I’d like students to go home with a clearer sense of what ‘north’ or ’northern landscape' means to them personally and why. For those that wish to take an exploration of north further my aim is to support that direction, including by recommending artists, images and writings to research.

Q. How will you combine the creative work that forms part of the course with providing one-to-one coaching/mentoring for the participants?

Helen: The way this usually works is that we spend the first day or so getting to grips with the theme, doing some collages and then working through some key hand stitch techniques. People love to get to the hand stitching! I then begin one to one conversations with students. Usually it works out that one or two people are very keen to talk early on, others prefer to wait a bit. I’d expect to have at least one coaching conversation of 20-30 minutes with each student on each of the two weekends. The actual length of each conversation varies, it depends a bit on the people, the size of the group and how the teaching and group discussion goes.

These are confidential conversations so we may sit in a quiet space or walk round the block, it depends on what people prefer (and the weather). I aim 'to meet people where they are' so conversations can be very broad, or very focussed, it depends. This is about supporting the student and their creative journey. Previous topics have included developing a portfolio of work to apply for a course, planning an exhibition or body of work, how to ‘make better work,' how to manage time, getting a studio and so on. I’ve been an artist, coach/mentor and arts manager/leader for over 20 years so have a wealth of experience to draw on.

Q. You have combined creative development with individual coaching time in workshops in the past, in your experience who might benefit most from this approach?

Helen: This is a good question - in my experience coaching can be really helpful when people can’t see the creative wood for the trees. It can help bring clarity and focus to art and creativity, support individuals to develop a plan and create ways forward for their creativity that suit their lives and circumstances.

Northern Landscape with Hand Stitch runs over two weekends to enable students to have time to work on their own and to reflect in between the two sessions. At the end of the first weekend students will go home with ideas to explore before the second weekend. The first session is Friday 8th to Sunday 10th April and the second session is Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th May. There are still places available on this course; you can find more information here.

Helen has a wealth of experience supporting artists. If you are worried about whether the course is right for you please contact me here and I’ll put you in touch with Helen. Spending time with like minded people, working and making art in a lovely space, can be a real boost to morale and confidence. I hope you’ll join myself and Helen in April and May.

I have a bumper crop of guest tutors teaching in my studio this year. Some are rescheduled workshops from 2020/21 and some are new for this year. The tutors are artists whose work I admire, who offer something different to the workshops I run and, most importantly, come highly recommended by friends and students.

We start the year with the fabulous Helen Parrott who will be teaching Northern Landscapes and Hand Stitch. In this five day workshop spread over two weekends you will explore mark making and hand stitch inspired by images of your favourite northern landscapes. The workshop combines creative personal development with individual coaching and is suitable for ‘intermediate’ embroiderers and textile artists. The dates are 8th to 10th April and 14th and 15th May and places are available.

I am delighted to tell you that Alice Fox will, after a 2 year delay, be teaching her Rust Marks workshop in the studio from the 22nd to 24th April. And Debbie Lyddon, again after a long delay, will be teaching her Decorative Surfaces for 3D Textiles workshop from the 3rd to the 6th May. Both these workshops are sold out but if you would like to go on a waiting list please contact me here.

I will be welcoming the lovely Ruth Brown into the studio twice this year. Many of you will know Ruth from her books on Cyanotype and on using Photoshop for textile art. More recently she has turned her talents to book binding and the workshop she ran here last summer was brilliant. The two workshops she will be teaching this year are both ‘stand alone’ workshops teaching different types of binding. Ruth will be teaching More Books for Textile Artists on 21st to 24th June and Books for Textile Artists on 30th August to 2nd September. There are 2 places available on the June workshop and 3 on the August workshop.

And finally, I am so looking forward to welcoming Louise Baldwin into the studio. Louise will be teaching her 4 day Accidentally on Purpose workshop from Sunday 24th July to Wednesday 27th July. In the workshop you will explore ways of constructing, breaking down and reconstructing a series of stitched mixed media works using a range of materials based around found packaging, fabric and ephemera, alongside any imagery that you might find particularly evocative. Because of a slight change of dates I now have 1 place available on this workshop.

I am feeling really positive about 2022 and looking forward to a year without cancellations / rescheduling. But I’m also cautious - I will be keeping the ‘Covid-safe’ measures in place in the studio for the foreseeable future including plastic screens between benches, mask wearing when moving around the studio and in shared work areas and lateral flow testing before and during the workshops.

If you have any questions you can contact me here or through the comments option. Thank you, Leah.

Sample made for my new Artefact series

My art goals for 2022 are simple. Make more. Submit more. The need to earn a living and to care for my family are what they are and mean that making art has to fit around them. One of the reasons I left industry and started teaching in my studio was to get a much better balance between these three parts of my life and it was, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic, the best decision I’ve ever made. I now have periods of time, mostly in the winter, when I can work on my art full time and without interruption. This is great for developing new ideas and starting on new series. But if I am going to make more art this year I need to figure out how to always have a piece or pieces part made that I can work on when I only have a few hours or a few days free.

I love making big art but the composition / construction stage really needs space (my big print bench and my design wall as a minimum, yes I’m spoilt) and time because I really don’t want to be unpinning hundreds of bits of fabric from my design wall each time I need it for a workshop. Whereas the quilting stage just needs room to get my sewing machine out. And a bit of clean space to fold / roll the quilt so that I can get it through the tiny throat on my machine. So, before my teaching schedule really kicks in in March I need to prepare several ‘backgrounds’ to use in Artefact and Cadence pieces. I can then spend the spring and summer quilting these backgrounds and adding the foreground details. Unfortunately I don’t completely ‘design’ my pieces early on in the process. My ideas evolve as I stitch. I don’t 100% decide on foreground details until I have finished the construction, and sometimes the quilting of the background. Inevitably some of the backgrounds that I prepare over the coming weeks will need to be cropped as I add those foreground details. Which feels wasteful but I’m hoping allows me to make more art this year.

My other goal is to submit more. I used to be good at keeping a list of upcoming calls for entry to curated shows and submitting proposals for gallery space but got out of the habit in 2020 when I lost touch with my art practise. I started submitting pieces again last year and have had some success with Cadence pieces but I need to build on this. I need a steady flow of new work to make this possible. And I need to become OK with rejection again. Because rejection is part of making art and cannot be a reason to hit the gin bottle and avoid the studio!

So my art goals are simple. Make more. Submit more.

Self Portrait by Pippa Wardman

I love seeing the fabrics that my students print and dye during workshops - their work is so varied and inspirational. But I don’t often get to see what happens next - how they use their fabrics. I suspect that many pieces are put away in cupboards, but I hope that, at the very least, they get pulled out every so often and stroked lovingly. However earlier this autumn I asked my students to send me photos of work made using fabrics created here at Urban Studio North. And wow! The variety of work is amazing and I’m grateful for their help. I have put together a gallery of their work which can be accessed via the workshop page on my website. Have a look!

(And, whilst I’m here, a quick reminder that the last date you can place orders for delivery in the UK before Christmas is this Wednesday, the 15th.)

Stitched sample by Hilary Kimber using the selvedges from breakdown printed fabrics.

The weather in the UK has been awful for the last few days so I thought you might appreciate some eye candy! Last week I had the very great pleasure of welcoming Christine Chester to my studio. She taught her 5 day Poetry of Decay class and it was fabulous. It is a mixed media workshop in which students add layers and layers of texture and colour to paper and cloth. Christine worked the students hard but the results were worth it. My thanks to Christine and especially to the students - Inge, Pippa, Chris, Gill, Ruth, Judy and Lesley.

I am delighted to announce that bookbinder and textile artist Ruth Brown will be giving two workshops in my studio next year. I sat in on the workshop she gave this year and it was brilliant. Ruth provides all the materials along with detailed notes. No prior knowledge is assumed and her demonstrations are well thought out and inspiring. You can find out more about Ruth here.

Ruth will be teaching a repeat of Books for Textile Artists from 30th August to 2nd September 2022. You can find more details and book here. In this workshop you will make -

·         A blizzard book - a folded book to contain business cards.

·         A crown book - a variation on the blizzard book with removable pages

·         The Secret Belgian Binding - this gives a book which opens completely flat and has a cover which will turn back on itself. The cover pieces and the spine piece are woven together with a crisscross effect. The signatures (pages) are then sewn on to the weaving.

·         A long stitch binding where there is a wraparound cover and the signatures are sewn through the cover.

·         A Drum Leaf binding - this is a binding where each pair of pages is a spread with no stitching in the centre, making it a lovely way to display art work or photographs. The version we make will have a case binding (a hard back).

She will be teaching More Books for Textile Artists from 21st to 24th June 2022. You don’t have to have done the previous workshop to do this one as no previous knowledge is required. You can find out more about the workshop and book here. In this workshop you will make -

·         A single section, stub binding.

·         An A6 hard back notebook covered with hand-dyed fabric book cloth.

·         An elegant Origata binding.

·         An A5 twin needle Coptic stitch sketchbook with cloth covered hard covers. This intriguing stitch formation gives a more stable book than the more common single needle version.

·         A travel journal with laminated book cloth covers, an elastic closure and a storage pocket at the back.

In the meantime, if you’d like to spend time in the studio before winter sets in then I have a few places left on my workshops this autumn. Including one space on my two day Simply Screen Printing workshop that has become available because of a cancellation. Have a look at my Workshops page for more details.

Bye for now, Leah

A very big thank you to Rosie James for teaching in my studio this week! I love her work and it was great to see her processes. The students loved it!

Here are just a few images of students work. In order: Jan, Janet, Ali, Tracey (x2), Sam, Kate and Sarah

After a lovely time stitchin’ I’m now ankle deep in teaching. Autumn term is choke full of different workshops. I started last weekend with a wonderful new group of Creative Surface Design students. I always start this program with a focus on colour. It’s my favourite subject and I firmly believe that if you don’t love the colours you are working with you are very unlikely to love the printed or dyed fabrics you produce. We also used screens, mono-printing and mark making to create some ‘backgrounds’ for use during the next session. Not sure I like the colours I mixed …. but that’s the point! So back to the drawing board for me.

This week the very talented Rosie James will be teaching ‘Drawing with Your Sewing Machine’ in the studio. I love Rosie’s work and am looking forward to seeing the students samples and finished works.

Through October and November I’ll be teaching my colour course ‘Colour Your Palette’ as well as my screen printing based workshops ‘Simply Screen Printing’, ‘Print Your Palette’ and ‘Print, Stitch, Go’. As well as teaching my Creative Surface Design and my Introduction to Surface Design students. Phew!

At the end of November Christine Chester will be in the studio teaching her popular ‘Poetry of Decay’ workshop. This one has been delayed and delayed because of the pandemic so I have all my fingers and toes crossed that we have no further interruptions.

Most of the workshops are full but there are a few places left on Print Your Palette and Print, Stitch, Go if you fancy an indulgent five days in the studio.

I’m not going to have much free time for a while but that’s OK. Work on Flamin’ Nora will start again in December!

Those of you who follow me on social media may have spotted that I’ve been rather busy teaching my Breakdown Your Palette workshop. I’ve had three groups of students in three weeks. Exhausting but, at last, I’m just about caught up with my Breakdown students from all the cancelling and rescheduling caused by the pandemic. I love teaching this class because every student’s work is different and their appetite for learning is inspiring! And, of course, it is just wonderful to have actual human beings in the studio!

I plan on teaching Breakdown Your Palette three times in 2022. You can find the dates here.

But if you can’t wait or can’t make it to my studio then I also offer an online Breakdown Your Palette workshop. It is an on-demand workshop that you can start at any time. You get 12 months access to videos, notes and support from me so you can work at your own pace. You can find out more here.

I know that sometimes you leave a workshop with good intentions to keep going but then life gets in the way and, before you know it, months have gone by and you can’t quite remember what you did in class. So I am now offering those students who have done the five day Breakdown Your Palette workshop in my studio a £120 discount on the online version. Please contact me for a discount code.

And, if you’re enrolled on the online workshop and would like to come and do it in my studio then please contact me for a £120 discount on the price of the workshop.

And now I’m off for a few days holiday in a caravan on Anglesey, Wales. With fingers crossed for good weather but with a few good books in case it isn’t!