It is that time of year when you may be looking for Christmas presents for others, or dropping big hints about things you would like yourself. So, always being happy to help, I have added some new products to my online shop that you might like.

I’ve put together some new Wonky Print Packs and some packs of hand dyed fabric. The fabrics are all ones that I’ve made whilst teaching or when demonstrating breakdown printing at Festival of Quilts in the summer. Each pack contains approx. 1 metre of fabric and includes some ‘nearly solid’ colours that co-ordinated with the printed fabrics.

I’ve also added some new Thermofax Screen designs. Most are designs that I’ve used in my older art quilts and that my students have really liked to use in the studio. Deco 1 (below) is a completely new design that I’m rather pleased with.

Together we have raised £336 this year for the charity YoungMinds. I’d really like to add to that total so I have had some beautiful ceramic mugs made that feature my quilt Cadence 7. Each mug costs £12 including a £2 donation to YoungMinds. I hope you like them.

Although I spend a lot of my time printing I also teach my students lots of ways to dye their fabrics. I’ve put together a Beginners Hand Dyeing Kit in two colourways. Each kit contains three 50g pots of dye, soda ash, urea, a graduated measuring pot and a detailed instruction booklet that covers bag dyeing, dyeing a colour wheel, gradation dyeing, layered dyeing, tray dyeing and high immersion bucket dyeing. The Spring kit contains Acid Lemon, Magenta and Turquoise dyes and the Autumn kit contains Golden Yellow, Scarlet and Royal Blue dyes. The kits contain enough dyes etc to dye over eight metres of fabric and (I think) are a good place to start if you have never done any dyeing with Procion MX dyes.

And finally, if your loved ones are worried that they might buy you the wrong thing how about suggesting one of my Gift Cards (available in £20, £50 and £100 units).

And that is the blatant plugging over for now ….. I might add a few more Wonky Print Packs when I’ve caught up with my backlog of rinsing, washing and ironing my printed fabrics!

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!

…. is the working title of the quilt I’ve been working on over the last week or so. It is a new piece in my Cadence series and will probably be titled Cadence 8 once it is finished. It is a piece inspired by those days when my carefully constructed oasis of calm, steady creativity is disrupted by unexpected but often petty interruptions (must remember to lock the studio door from the inside / turn off my phones), by stuff not working properly (I swear that my beloved sewing machine knows when to irritate me!) and by life just getting in the way. The type of day when I might say something a bit stronger than flamin’ nora.

I’m guessing you know what I mean …..

And so this quilt. It has the same main elements as Cadence 7 but instead of a calm, narrow band of colour running along the centre it is interrupted by a spiky band of colour that is the focal point of the quilt. It is a long way from finished but I thought that I’d share a few work in progress photos.

Although I’ve been enjoying some gaps between workshops this month my October and November are crazy busy. Which means that it will be December before I can finish the quilt. Which is frustrating as ideas for Cadence 9 are already forming in my head. But that’s life!

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!

Sample from Poetry of Stitch with Christine Chester

After the excitement of Festival my feet are now firmly back on the ground! Time to look ahead. I have some wonderful guest tutors visiting my studio over the next year. Some of their workshops are fully booked however I do still have places on the following:

Poetry of Stitch with Christine Chester, Monday 20th to Friday 24th September 2021. In this five day workshop Christine will look at ways of stitching that will expand your language of marks. You will look at both hand and machine stitching thinking about the character and the weight of the stitching that you 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.

Poetry of Decay with Christine Chester, Monday 22nd to Friday 26th November 2021. Only two places left. This is one of Christine’s most popular workshops. 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.

Accidently on Purpose with Louise Baldwin, Tuesday 26th to Friday 29th July 2022. Only two places left. In this four day 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.

And finally …. a change of dates means that there are now places available on Northern Landscapes with Helen Parrott, 8th to 10th April and 14th and 15th May 2022. This two part exploratory weekend workshop combines personal creative development with individual coaching time. You will explore mark making and hand stitch inspired by photographs of your own favourite northern landscapes, creating paperworks and samples as you go along.

I will also be hosting a couple of book binding workshops with Ruth Brown next year. More details to follow!

SAmple from Northern Landscapes with Helen Parrott

Cadence 7

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Instagram may already know that I had a very good Festival of Quilts last week. Like most exhibitors, and many of the visitors I guess, I was a bit anxious about going and really wasn’t sure how the show would go. But it went great!

So thank you to the event organisers and the staff at the NEC - you created a spacious, safe, clean environment and your support is much appreciated. Thank you to my son Joe for helping with set up on the Wednesday and to my dear friend Ruth Brown for helping me on the stand during the show. Thank you to all the visitors - you created a wonderful ‘vibe’ and it was lovely to speak with so many of you after such a long gap. Thank you to those of you who are reading my posts for the first time. Thank you to those of you who brought my fabrics and my books. Thank you to those who placed orders for dyes, screens etc. And a very, very big thank you to the judges who awarded my quilt, Cadence 7, 1st place in the Art Quilt category. That really was the cherry on the icing on a very good cake!

Shows like Festival of Quilts are hard work but always rewarding. This year was special in so many ways and I’m glad that I made the decision to go. I have already booked my stand for next year - it is going to be amazing!

I’m busy packing boxes and printing signs ready for Festival of Quilts which opens on Thursday at the NEC, Birmingham. I’ll be on stand QIA - the Cadence quilt above will be on the stand along with Ruins 8:Kilns so I should be easy to spot.

As I said before I am limited in what products I can sell on my stand so am offering an order now, collect at the show option on orders over £20. Just type in the discount code FOQ2021 at checkout and no postage will be added to the order. The deadline for this service is Monday (tomorrow) at 10am so that I have time to get orders ready.

I will also be taking orders at the show for a selection of products from my online shop including dyes and screens for delivery to your home address free of charge after the show. Unfortunately this offer will only apply to UK addresses and again the minimum order will be £20. Postage outside the UK is just too expensive to extend this offer outside the UK.

On my stand I will have my books and my hand dyed and printed fabrics for sale. And, of course, you’ll be able to sign up for workshops in my studio in 2021 and 2022. I’m also giving a Quick & Easy workshop at 1pm on the Saturday called Hand Printed by Me! And I’ll be demonstrating breakdown printing on my stand. I am really looking forward to connecting to people again. Hope to see some of you there!