Intersecting Lines 2

The very good news is that my roll of thermofax mesh has arrived safely from Australia so I can now make screens. Hooray!

But nothing is straight forward at the moment.

The bad news is that I only have 15 large frames and 30 small frames and am struggling to source more. Manufacturers are busy using their perspex supply to make protective screens for supermarket tills etc. I’m currently being quoted at least another 5 - 6 weeks for frames. I did think about waiting until the supply chain was back to normal but I know that some of you are waiting to order. So I have made all the thermofax screens available in my webshop. Hooray!

My webshop isn’t clever enough to total up orders and stop at 15 large or 30 small so I will fill orders as they come in and will make the screens unavailable once I have used all the frames. My apologies up front if I don’t do this soon enough and you are able to place an order that I can’t fill. I’ll issue you a refund.

Of course it could be that I am not clever enough to figure out my own webshop. Surely not!

The other bit of good news - I have now added gift cards to my webshop. Available in £20, £50 and £100 amounts each gift card is a unique code sent to you by email. The code is used by entering it at checkout and is valid for ever.

Stay well, Leah

Scattered Lines 1

I have been completely overwhelmed by the response to the post I wrote on Sunday. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their feelings and thoughts via the blog, Facebook and by email. I don’t think I have ever had such a response to a post. It warmed my heart and, yes, it made me cry. It also made me sad that all but a couple were feeling the same as me . We are in an emotional mess that is exhausting. But the message from everyone was to know that I am not alone, to stop feeling guilty, to accept that I am not wonder woman (who knew?) and to just roll with it.

I have seen it written that we will bounce back from this stronger. I think it will take all of our personal and collective strength to get through these awful times. When we emerge from the physical threat the majority of us will be mentally fragile and will need to continue to support each other. I am grateful for the virtual support you are giving me today but, my goodness, do I look forward to the day when I can give you all a great big hug!

With love, Leah x

Work in (very slow) progress ….

I can’t be the only one, can I? Along with sadness and anxiety I have felt a pervasive sense of guilt over these last awful weeks. Social media is full of so many people doing wonderful things with the unexpected time that lock down has given some of us. Learning mandarin whilst home schooling and organising daily zoom meeting for friends and family …. I feel like such a slacker!

There is the endless list of ‘shoulds’

• I should be making lots of art (but my artistic mojo seems to be pulling a lot of ‘duvet’ days).

• I should be writing my next book (but writing complete sentences seems like an uphill battle some days).

• I should be stitching dozens of pairs of scrubs and flooding Salford with cheerful laundry bags (but … well no excuses on this one really).

• I should be sticking to my healthy diet and cooking wonderful dishes from those lentils I stockpiled (but lentils really don’t tick that comfort eating button do they?).

• I should be taking my government prescribed one hour of exercise each day (but why break the habit of a lifetime?).

• I should cobweb (but again, why break the habit of a lifetime?).

• I should wash the filters in my vacuum cleaner (yes, that actually crossed my mind in a particularly depressing moment).

• I should, I should, I should …..

But the reality is that some days I just want to curl up with a tub of Ben and Jerrys and watch Netflix. Some days I do want to work on my art, some days I do want to work on my book, some days I do want to eat healthy food (but to be honest there aren’t many of these) but even on those good days those little feelings of guilt still creep in …..

It can’t just be me, can it?

Staying well and staying sane(ish), Leah

Thank you so much to those who managed to buy one of my charity bookmarks before they sold out! Yes, all 30 bookmarks have been sold raising £150 for The Trussell Trust. I have just made the donation (and used gift aid so that the charity can also claim back an extra £37.50 tax on the donation). The work they do is so important especially today when many, many more people are struggling to feed themselves and their children. Your money will make a difference.

As I said I am going to make more bookmarks every time I print fabric for my webshop so if you missed out you will get another opportunity to help.

Keep well, stay strong! Leah xx

Last week my daughter Jess and her pals at Good Press in Glasgow designed and printed bookmarks to sell to support local charities. I thought it was a brilliant idea. So brilliant that I have stolen it! So let me introduce my Limited Edition Fabric Bookmarks which I am selling, via my webshop, to raise funds for The Trussell Trust. The UK has a frankly shocking level of food poverty and this charity supports food banks across the country as well as campaigning for an end to hunger. The Corona virus crisis has made the situation worse so their work is even more important. Hunger is unacceptable anywhere in the world but I have chosen to support a UK charity as I am currently only shipping to UK addresses.

I have made each bookmark by sandwiching a piece of interfacing between two pieces of my hand printed fabrics and have finished with stitch. I selected the yummiest bits from my latest batch of breakdown printed fabrics to create sets of ten bookmarks in each of three colourways. I thought long and hard about pricing and have decided to sell each bookmark for £5. I know that there will be some reading this who are suffering financially right now but I also know that many of you are doing OK and for whom £5 is not too much. I’m not charging for postage on these bookmarks and every penny will go to The Trussell Trust. And I am committing to making more sets of 10 bookmarks each time I print and dye fabrics to sell in my webshop for the duration of this crisis.

As well as the bookmarks I have added my latest batch of Wonky Print Inspiration Packs to my webshop. Eleven different colour combinations this time. I hope you like them.

As always, stay well,

Leah

Folded rusted fabrics - Alice Fox

Along with lots of teachers I have had to cancel and postpone workshops whilst we live in these strange and worrying times. In most cases my lovely students have been able to ‘sign up’ for rearranged workshops but not everyone has been able to do that. So I now have places available on two wonderful workshops.

I have places on Rust Marks with Alice Fox in which you will learn about the potential for using found rusty objects for printing and dyeing on paper and fabric. Using an experimental approach and found metal you will explore methods for transferring marks from rusty metal onto papers and fabrics. The new dates are Friday 19th March to Sunday 21st March 2021. The workshop cost is £255 with a £125 deposit needed to book a place.

I also have places on Poetry of Decay with Christine Chester. This mixed media course will introduce you to some materials and processes that will help you to create rich and textured surfaces based on the inspiration found in your own photographs. The new dates are Monday 8th to Friday 12th March 2021. The cost is £425 including a £175 deposit.

Of course none of us know exactly what will be happening over the next few months but I am hoping that we will all be able to be together soon. Much as I love having the studio to myself I am missing the fun, the conversation and the glorious chaos that comes with a full studio!

Stay well, Leah

Interpreting decay - Christine Chester

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

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