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.

I am very pleased to announce that Christine Chester will be teaching her five day Poetry of Stitch workshop here at Urban Studio North next September. Christine is a talented artist, popular teacher and runs her own studio in Eastbourne.

Stitching, whether by hand or machine, is usually the final layer on a piece of work and often the process we enjoy the most. But we can get into a routine of using the stitches with which we are most familiar. In this workshop Christine will encourage you to look at ways of stitching that will extend your language of marks. She will look at both hand and machine stitching thinking about the character and the weight of the stitching that we are using and how to apply that to printed work so that the stitch either enhances the printed layer; or creates focus within the print. There will be an emphasis on trying lots of small sample pieces before starting to work on a larger, more considered piece of work.

The five day workshop costs £450 and requires students to bring their own sewing machine. If you want to learn more about Poetry of Stitch please click here.

This is the final announcement about workshops in 2021 - the studio calendar is pretty full and I have all my fingers and toes crossed that we can run without restrictions, hopefully from March onwards. Normally I would now be thinking about workshops in 2022 but, given all the uncertainty in our lives, I’m not planning on making any announcements until Easter.

Before I go …..tis the season of shameless marketing ….. did you know that you can buy Urban Studio North gift cards in my online shop? Available in £20, £50 and £100 values, these digital gift cards can be used on all of the products in my shop including workshops, books, dyes etc and never expire! So if your loved ones don’t know what to get you for Christmas why not suggest a gift card?

Thank you for reading, Leah x

Whilst it is likely that there will be restrictions on my ability to open the studio early in the New Year I am very hopeful that life will get back to something near normal in the spring. The news about vaccines over recent days has felt like a glimmer of sunshine in what is a dark winter for many people around the world.

Looking ahead I am very pleased to tell you that I have developed a five day workshop Colour Your Palette based on my new book. In the workshop we will consider the differences between paints and dyes and what that means as we translate colour theory into colour practice when using dyes to add colour to cloth. We will look at the six types of colour references in the book and students will make a start on creating their own sets. We will explore various tools, including colour families, for creating different types of colour schemes. We will use those tools to work through multiple sources of inspiration, extracting individual colours and, if appropriate, blending those colours to create coherent collections, or palettes, of colour. And we will learn how to translate our colour choices into working practices, controlling colour within the confines of the surface design technique we prefer to use.

The workshop is aimed at those who already know how to dye or print fabric but want better control over colour in their work. The cost for the five days is £425 but this also includes ten squeezy bottles and an acrylic mixing plate so that students can continue their studies at home. The workshop will run four times next year on 12-16 April, 5-9 July, 13-17 September and 18-22 October. You can find out more here.

I have also added two new dates for my Breakdown Your Palette five day workshop. The new dates are 9th to 13th August 2021 and 23rd to 27th August 2021. Many of my 2020 Breakdown students moved their bookings to the 2021 workshops when I had to cancel the workshops this year so I will be teaching this workshop a lot next year. Which is wonderful as breakdown printing is my favourite thing! The workshops cost £400 and you can find out more here.

And finally, whilst I was loading these new workshops onto my website I noticed that the images of some of my Wonky Print Inspiration Packs in my shop were all the same. No idea how that happened but I have, hopefully, reset the images correctly.

Bye for now, Leah x

If you follow me on Facebook you might have already seen that the copies of my new book arrived safely, albeit a day later than expected. 55 boxes of books stacked on a pallet! To say that my heart was in my mouth when I opened the first box would be an understatement. My proof copies were printed using a digital printer whereas the main print run was offset / litho printed and there is always the risk of colour shift between the two. I’m delighted to say that the colours were all OK and the book looks fabulous! Which made me very happy (and a little tearful)!

Son, Joe was somewhat less happy as he had to carry most of the boxes down into our cellar!

But it has all been worth it. I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who ordered Colour Your Palette, and to everyone who ordered other items from my webshop. Your support means the world to me and my family! Over the last three days Joe and I have packed and shipped 154 parcels with Joe doing most of the runs to the post office. He is a star!

You may remember that I promised to donate £1 to The Trussell Trust for every book pre-ordered between the 1st and 10th November. I am delighted to let you know that 151 books were pre-ordered and that, along with sales of charity bookmarks, I was able to send £206 to them this morning. With gift aid we have donated £673.75 since the lockdown in March. Like many other textile teachers around the world my income has been significantly affected by the pandemic. But I’m lucky - if things got really bad we have property and pension pots as a safety net. The Trussell Trust provides food banks for those, often young families, who aren’t so lucky. It is going to be a long, hard winter for so many and I’m grateful for your help in supporting them.

Thank you x

Thank you to everyone who has been placing orders for my new book and other ‘stuff’ via my website. The response to Colour Your Palette has been rather overwhelming and very much appreciated. The books are ‘in production’ and due to be delivered to me on Tuesday (10th). I aim, with the help of son Joe, to get everything shipped within 3 days. Which has meant getting organised.

I do like getting organised so this has been a real treat! I have set up piles of ‘book only’ orders by destination and postage type. And I have been putting together the orders for those of you who have ordered fabric, dyes etc along with your book. These are also organised by destination and postage type. I’ve ordered and received the packaging that will be needed. And Joe has created storage space for the 50+ boxes of books that will arrive on Tuesday.

We have worked out a system for checking books and packing them. I’m in charge of shipping labels and order confirmations. Joe is in charge of taking parcels to the post office. Call me weird but I love stuff like this! (I suspect Joe might not love it quite as much as he is doing all the heavy lifting!).

And whilst I wait for Tuesday I’ve been taking time out to ‘recharge my batteries’. After shipping out all the books I want to get back to ‘making’. I’ve done plenty of printing, dyeing and playing for the book but it is 6 months since I worked on my art. Six months since I sat at my sewing machine. Far too long!

Stay well,

Leah x

Colour swatches on a piece of silk linen fabric

First of all, a great big thank you to all of you who placed orders for my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ yesterday!

I spent the morning emailing students to cancel all my November workshops due to the UK lockdown that starts on Thursday. My lovely students were all great and most have just moved their bookings to next year but I still felt incredibly sad as I look forward to having students in the studio so much. Seeing the orders come through for the book made the day easier. (As well as providing a much needed income!)

In this post I’m going to share a few pages from the book starting with the contents page. There is a lot in my book. I start by looking at traditional colour theory and colour practice when using dyes. I then take the reader through the creation of a series of colour references that not only illustrate the reality of working with dyes but also create a catalogue of hundreds of swatches of different colours each with the exact recipe needed to reproduce them.

Page 3 - Contents

Page 14 - Hue - one of the fundamental properties of colour

Page 41 - Scraping swatches of colour onto fabric

Page 45 - Adding more swatches

Page 63 - Looking at our colour references and what they tell us about our base colours

After step-by-step guides to creating colour references I include a section on how we might use them - to match individual colours, to create a range of colours based on one hue in a range of values (monochromatic), to create a range of colours in a similar value that are analogous and to create a range of colours that differ in both hue and value (colour families). Again, lots of step-by-step instructions and photos.

Page 109 - Matching individual colours

Page 125 - Different ways of mixing colour families

I then change tack and go back to colour theory, looking at traditional colour schemes and how our artistic styles might affect the types of palettes of colour that we develop for our work. I was honoured to be allowed to share examples from some great artists in this section - Charloote Ziebarth, Christine Seager, Diane Melms, Julie Bunter, Leslie Morgan and Uta Lenk - thank you! And, through a series of colour studies, I looked at how we might work with different types of sources of inspiration for colour.

Page 144 - Types of colour scheme

Page 148 - Colour study based on photos of the beach at Dunure, Scotland

And finally, well nearly finally, I include a section giving instructions for some of the techniques I used to make the samples in the book. These are ‘tried and tested’ techniques that I’ve been using for years. There are a myriad of different ways to add colour to textile and some excellent books already out there. My book is more about the understanding and control of colour when using any one of those techniques.

Page 164 - Dyeing small pieces of fabric in a plastic bag (you can do this in containers if you don’t want to use bags!)

Page 176 - Simple screen printing technique using shredded paper on the fabric as a resist

Page 184 - Yes, I include a short section on breakdown printing!

And finally, I have included an extensive Appendix which is chock full of information about the science of colour, the dyes and other chemicals we use etc.

I recognise that the structure and content of my book is a little different. But in it, I share the sum of my knowledge to date with the hope that it inspires you to delve deeper into colour.

Stay well,

Leah x

You can now pre-order my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ via my on line shop. The book costs £25 (+ postage) and I expect to start shipping globally from the 10th November.

Colour Your Palette is a practical guide to understanding and using colour when specifically working with Procion MX dyes. But the principle behind the book, and the exercises it contains, could equally apply to other dye types. I have attempted to translate traditional colour theory, based on paints and paint pigments, into colour practice when using dyes. Because dyes do not behave like paints. Dyes are not a surface application where the colour is ‘stuck’ to the surface like paint on paper. Dyes penetrate right into our fabrics, our yarns, our fibres, and our threads reacting with them chemically at a molecular level. They don’t make our fabric stuff and they don’t fade when washed. Dyes are translucent - we can print or dye our textiles multiple times adding layers of texture and shape. But they do come with some limitations that mean the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using paint are not the same as the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using dyes.

Colour Your Palette is a ‘big’ book at 216 pages but my aim, in writing it, was to provide a guide that helps you achieve the results that you want time and time again. A guide that gives you all the information you need to create colours that make your heart sing!

To coincide with the launch of my new book I have added a selection of new products to my website. In addition to all the dyes and other chemicals I am now selling three sizes of screen (for screen printing), wide necked squeezy bottles (for storing thickened dyes) and acrylic mixing plates (for mixing small quantities of thickened dyes, mono-printing and so much more). And I have put together a range of Starter Packs with a 15% discount on the cost of the individual items. I’ll talk about these more in the coming days.

I have also added some new Wonky Print Inspiration Packs of my own printed and dyed fabrics.

And, just to remind you, I will be donating £1 for every copy of Colour Your Palette sold between the 1st and 10th November to The Trussell Trust, supporting food banks throughout the UK.

Thank you, and stay well, Leah x

PS. I have scheduled this post, and all the new products, to become public at one minute past midnight on the 1st …… or at least I think I have!

Those of you who follow me on Facebook might know that I have been ill for a few days and had a Covid-19 test on Monday. Which thankfully has come back negative. I wasn’t too surprised when I started to feel extremely tired as I had been pushing myself too hard to finish the book. But then I started dry coughing and was a bit short of breath. Me, husband and son had a long discussion along the lines of ‘you can’t have it’, ‘but I went to the supermarket last Thursday’, ‘but your were masked up and your hands were gelled’, ‘but I had to queue at the checkout for longer than normal’ ‘but you were masked ……. ‘ .The more we talked the more I coughed. So ‘nurse’ Joe took charge and a Covid test was booked. Husband moved stuff into the spare room and I was escorted to our bedroom along with a supply of books, jigsaw, devices, chargers etc. I’m not very good at being ill and I am definitely not very good at being isolated. But it was the right thing to do and I’m grateful for Joe looking after me and for making sure that I couldn’t infect my husband. And I’m grateful for all the kind words from friends and social media buddies!

I have been lucky. My test was negative so I can get back into the studio. Albeit in small doses as I’m still tired.

Which means I can get back to what I was doing before all this. Which was looking at postage rates. I had a little surprise a couple of weeks ago when I shipped a copy of my Breakdown book to Australia and the postage was £3 more than I was used to. I thought it must be a mistake. But no. Royal mail has increased to cost of shipping to locations outside of the UK and Europe by 20 - 30% depending on the location and service. They have also introduced a US only rate which is about the same as the rate to Australia - yes, it now costs more to ship to the US than to Canada. Their UK and EU rates have also increased albeit not as much. A quick check confirmed that international couriers such as UPS, FedEx etc also seem to have put their prices up. I guess because fewer planes are flying there is less capacity.

I also realised that my new book is bigger, and heavier, than my first book so can’t be shipped as a ‘large letter’. I have spent some time looking at different options and used past orders to test different scenerio’s. So I will be taking my website offline for a few hours tomorrow to switch from a postage system based on the cost of the order to one based on the weight of the order. Unfortunately my website doesn’t have the ability to set postage by product type which would have allowed me to separate heavy books from light pots of dye powder.

In the UK there will be three rates - £3.70 up to and including 1kg (which covers the new book), £5.57 up to and including 2kg and £7.79 for anything over 2kg (which is actually cheaper than I was charging as I’ve switched to a different provider). Outside the UK the weight increments are much finer so I won’t list them all! I have been using International Standard but am now going to include the option of International Economy which is very significantly cheaper if you are outside the EU. The downside being that it takes longer for post to arrive.

I am also making the commitment to you that for any order that weighs over 2kg I will check the cost of shipping via other carriers and, if I get it cheaper I will refund you the difference.

I wish that I could absorb these increases as I know that for some outside of Europe the postage may make my new book unaffordable. But, like many, many self-employed people my income has been significantly reduced thanks to that pesky virus. International Economy does provide a much cheaper option as does getting together with a group of friends to place a bigger option.

Apologies for a rather long post but I prefer to be transparent in my pricing.

Stay well, Leah x

The files for my new book, Colour Your Palette, are with my printer and I’m expecting my ‘proof’ copy on Wednesday. Wednesday is also my husbands 59th birthday - I know what I’m more excited about!

The ‘proof’ copy is a final check on the 350+ images in the book rather than the words or the layout. The colours we see on a screen are not always the colours we get when we print images. I’ve printed the book on my own laser jet printer but the real test is when the book is printed on the correct paper. I felt physically sick when I got the proof copy of my first book as I had nightmares of having to re-photograph large sections of the book but in the end only changed one image. So this time I am a little more relaxed. And enjoying a few days rest before it arrives.

If all goes well I will place the order for the books at the end of next week and receive them towards the end of the following week, a few days ahead of my planned publication date of 10th November. Phew!

The book will be available for pre-order from the 1st November but I have already added details to my website so if you want a sneaky peek of what is in Colour Your Palette click here.

And, as a reminder, I will be donating £1 for every book ordered between the 1st and the 10th November to The Trussell Trust.