After a 'career break' of three months I started my new day job last Monday. New job, new people, new systems, new products, new processes and new responsibilities. And a new car, laptop and phone. It has been both energising and exhausting but, so far, thoroughly enjoyable.

Even though I have a deadline looming for the piece I'm currently working on I decided to be kind to myself and to drop my usual weekly target of 20 hours in the studio. I also made sure that I had no commitments this weekend so that I could relax and recover from what has been a very full-on week. Actively planning to take time off from the studio is quite hard for me to do as I have a bit of a 'superhuman' complex and routinely push myself hard. But I am glad I did. I have gone to bed early a few nights, read a book, watched some TV and enjoyed a few cups of coffee in the garden. I feel full of energy and am looking forward to my alarm going off at 6.30am tomorrow morning!

The other way I have relaxed .... several hours quietly stitching in ends. After all it would have taken a truly superhuman effort for me to stay out of the studio for a full week!

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!

What better way to spend Bank Holiday weekend then with my friend Ruth Brown. We try to meet up two or three times a year in one of our studios for some dedicated 'play' time. This time I visited Ruth in her studio on Sunk Island and took over all my book making stuff.  In between lots of catching up, coffee and cake (and some experimental work with breakdown printing that I will share later) I finished a book that I had started during our family holiday in June. It is just smaller than A5 and I used a waxed, coloured linen thread and coptic stitch to join the book covers to the signatures (paper). Really happy with how neat the stitching looks!

I also took over some mulberry paper to see how it performed when making bookcloth. My previous pieces have all used Kozu paper which is a little pricey. The mulberry paper (from Colourcraft) worked beautifully. I have covered 3 boards ready to make a sort of 'double' book in which one of the boards is a common back board. This is a seriously addictive hobby!

Lots of people have asked how I am going to spend the £1000 award I received for winning the Art category at Festival of Quilts. Lots of encouragement to spend it on something for myself. Well I did spend £40 on a small piece of work by Rosie James but the rest of it is going into the studio 'pot'. Which definitely qualifies as something for myself! Although I treat my art just as seriously and (hopefully) as professionally as I do my day job the reality is that it does not pay. This is the first significant sum of money that has gone in the pot. And whilst I hope that it is not the last I do recognise that I am incredibly lucky that the money I earn in my day job allows me to work in the way that I want to and in the wonderful environment that is my studio. That said the unexpected income has 'allowed' me to order 60 metres of Cotton Poplin Delphina (from Whaleys of Bradford) rather than the usual 20 metres thus spreading the delivery charge out a bit. And it has 'allowed' me to invest in some new silkscreens. I typically buy one most years whilst I am at Festival of Quilts but, because I damage the occasional one, I only have 4 good screens at the moment. Which slows me down when I am breakdown printing as I only pull each screen a few times before cleaning it and remaking it. So I have invested in 10 new screens from Coated Screens Limited. Five at 14 x 20 inches and five rather large ones at 20 x 30 inches. Buying in bulk has reduced the cost considerably. Now I just need to figure out where to store them!

Up until now I have always been able to use my studio for photography. It has some white walls and very good natural light topped up with cool white fluorescent lighting. My photos have been OK. They have got some pieces into curated exhibitions. But photos of pieces from my very pale, ephemeral Still series have not been good enough. And now I have completed a piece that is just too big for me to photograph in my studio. Ruins 7 is 180cm wide by 249cm high.

At first I considered turning it through 90degrees, suspending it from the ceiling in my studio with some sort of backdrop suspended behind it. Hmm - not easy! Instead my son Cal borrowed a gallery space that at least allowed me to hang the piece against a white wall albeit still hung on it's side.

I found a great web article on photographing quilts (http://www.hollyknott.com/stq/) with lots of info on how to make your own lighting rig. After many fruitless hours I discovered that you can't buy really really bright compact fluorescent bulbs in cool white in the UK. Not to be put off Cal came up with a design using multiple lightfittings on two uprights. I brought wooden uprights and some shelf brackets to use as legs. Instead he borrowed some proper lights and a tripod off a friend. Clever lad!

And today we photographed the piece. Until now I have really only seen it on the bench. It looked great hung up and will look even better if I ever get to show it in a gallery with tall ceilings.

I'm not sharing an image of the whole piece as it is being submitted for an exhibition. However the detail shot above gives a good sense of the piece. Fingers crossed.

So where to begin. Festival of Quilts is huge. There are a dozen or so white walled gallery spaces, hundreds of open competition quilts and an awful lot of traders. There have been years when I have been so totally overwhelmed that I have left after a couple of hours. The truly amazing selection of work has sometimes made me wonder 'why bother' but at other times has energised me to rush back to the studio to make art. This year has been a good one. My piece Ruins 6 won 1st prize in the open Art Category, Vestiges got a 'highly commended' in the Miniature Category and Ruins 5 was shortlisted for Fine Art Quilt Masters. I floated on air and was humbled by all the congratulations and kind words. They even played my favourite Blur song (Song 2) when I went on stage to collect my award. Of course this was a completely random thing as the music is pre-selected but it made my grin even wider!

In between meeting friends and stewarding in the SAQA gallery I managed to visit all the galleries on my 'must see' list and saw quite a lot of the open competition quilts. My favourite gallery was probably Art Textile: Made In Britain: Concealed where I was blown away by the work of Rosie James. I also really enjoyed Claire Benn and Ingrid Press's gallery.

Unlike many visitors I never seem to remember to take photos of the works I like - for the most part I am too absorbed in looking and responding. I did take a few and here is a selection.

It is scary stuff adding colour to a piece that I have already invested hours and hours of my time in but it needed to be done. I was not happy with the piece and would probably have filed it in the bin so what did I have to loose? But it has been a long time since I added colour to a finished piece so I spent a pleasant morning trying different types of media and different application techniques on some small Ruins samples. I chose a Markal oil stick and yesterday started applying colour to Ruins 7.

Lessons learnt. Don't apply Markal too close to the edge of the mask as it is really easy to accidently slip off the paper. Make sure you remove any small specs that have fallen off the oil stick before you start brushing. Wash your hands regularly. And remember to breath!

It is just a week until Festival of Quilts opens at the NEC in Birmingham and I am getting organised. I have been to the show every year since it started. Some years I've spent several happy and productive days there. Other years I have run away screaming after a couple of hours because the shear volume of work on display is overwhelming. This year I am planning on being there on the Thursday and Friday and am determined to get the best out of the visit. I have organised to meet different friends for breakfast, lunch and for dinner (there goes the diet!). I will be stewarding in the SAQA gallery 'Celebrating Silver' between 2.30 and 4pm on both days. So please come along and say hello, it is always nice to see friends and meet Facebook buddies in the flesh!

I have written myself a short shopping list but expect to go 'off piste' and spend more money than I should. That said I am absolutely determined not to buy any more gorgeous coloured threads - I have a wonderful collection that has sat untouched for quite some time as everything I have stitched lately has been in white, black or grey! If you see me at the Oliver Twists stand please pull me away!!!

And finally I have had a look at the list of galleries to sort out the must see ones. Of course I will start by looking at my own work in Fine Art Quilt Masters and the Art and Miniature categories in the open competitions. Fine Arts has a really strong selection this year and I'm really looking forward to seeing the pieces. The other galleries on my list are:

• 6th European Quilt Triennial featuring a piece by friend and fellow Etcetera member Helen Conway.
• Art Textiles: Made in Britain: Concealed - the group features some of my favourite artists and their exhibition at FoQ in 2014 on Identity was amazing.
• Claire Benn and Ingrid Press - big fan of both
• Pam Stallebrass - I'm not familiar with her work but it sounds fascinating!

It is going to be a wonderful two days!