I may have already mentioned that September is going to be an exciting month for me. I have a solo exhibition at the AhHaa School for the Arts in Telluride and will be teaching two five day workshops there.

Telluride is a beautiful town located in the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado at 8,750' elevation. It was formed during the Colorado gold rush in the 1870s. Notoriously difficult to access one local legend says the the town was named after the phrase ‘To Hell You Ride’. More likely it was named after the telluride minerals found there. Silver, gold, copper and mercury were mined in the mountains and there were some amazing feats of engineering over the years to aid processing and transport. All the kind of stuff that gets me excited!

Today Telluride is renowned for its skiing in the winter and arts and music festivals in the summer. Ah Haa was founded in 1991, and the state of the art facility was completed in 2021. The School has amazing teaching spaces as well as a gallery. You can find out more here.

My exhibition will be there for the month of September. It is called Beneath Our Feet and will feature some of my coal mining and cotton mill pieces including the 4 metre long Ruins 12: Beneath Our Feet that I made for my exhibition at Salford Museum and Gallery in late 2023. It’s great that this one will get another outing! I’m also creating new pieces for the exhibition including four abstract pieces inspired by Tellurides mining past.

I will be teaching two workshops. The first, Simply Screen Printing, runs from 25th to 29th September and is suitable for beginners. There are still places available and you can find more details here. The second, Luscious Layers, runs from 2nd to 6th October and is aimed at students with prior knowledge of using dyes to add colour to cloth. You can find out more here.

It is very exciting and a little scary. And it will almost certainly coincide with the sale of the house and our move to Scotland but who wants a quiet life!

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while because of the prohibitive cost of international shipping and the customs and duties charges faced by European customers.

The book can now be ordered from anywhere and will be printed using Amazon’s print on demand service. Postage will be free for Prime customers. It is also available for instant download as a Kindle book. Just search Amazon books for ‘Simply Screen Printing’ or ‘Leah Higgins’. There is another author called Leah Higgins but you shouldn’t confuse her books with mine. The list price in the US is $45 although Amazon.com are currently showing it with a 12% discount. The Kindle price is $27. Prices in other countries are set by Amazon using their own conversion rates.

In the UK the paperback costs £33.30 and the Kindle version £19.98. However I still have about 100 copies from my last print run and you can buy these directly from me here. I’ve reduced the price to £30 to keep it competitive.

I appreciate that $45 or £33.30 seems pricy but Amazon take a very big chunk … I’ll only be earning approx $7 / £5 per copy sold by Amazon. Which is more than a bit frustrating but Amazon gives me access to markets I couldn’t reach on my own. Needless to say that I earn more money if you buy direct from me but I know how unaffordable this can be outside of the UK.

Even if you already have a copy (thank you!) please go look it up on Amazon - the more people that search for it the more easy it becomes to find! If you do buy a copy (thank you!) please take a moment to leave a review (ideally a good one!). You can also ‘follow me’ via my authors page. And please feel free to spread the word!

And in other news …. we have a buyer. Phew! Largs here we come.

I’ve had a lovely couple of days working through another small mountain of fabric that I am never going to use to create fabric packs that I’m hoping to rehome. Some of the fabrics were dyed for my Colour Your Palette book. Some are left overs from art series that I’m not going to work on again. Some were ‘demo’ pieces from past workshops. And quite a lot were created just for fun in the hope that I could squeeze a decades work out of each year ……

You can find them here.

The packs vary in size. There are some scrap packs which contain lots of smaller pieces of fabric as well as packs with multiple larger pieces. Lots of colours. All cotton, mostly cotton poplin but some packs of cotton sateen fabric as well. I hope you like them!

PS: house update for those who are interested … no formal buyer yet but lots of viewings and a couple of early offers.

… with a 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom, Victorian semi-detached house to sweeten the deal. Yes at long flippin’ last our house is on the market! About 4 weeks later than I had planned but unsurprising given the scale of the archeological dig into my husbands study and the front room in the cellar. And we have managed to clear out huge amounts of stuff without getting divorced or killing each other. But there is still time … hubby has got to reduce all of the books / comics / graphic novels etc that are currently taking up nearly 5 walls of shelf space by half. And yes, I still have to finish going through stuff in the studio.

If you are feeling noisy you see the house online by clicking hear. Or you can look for a video walk through on Instagram by clicking here. Please feel free to share - especially to anyone who is looking for a modestly priced artists studio with huge house attached.

The last four to six weeks have been solely focused on the house with little time for rest or art. We caught up on our sleep and had a thoroughly lazy few days in Largs last week - great weather, amazing views and Nardinis - and yesterday I got back into the studio to make art. I have some pieces in my new Shoreline series that need finishing but my priority is making new art for my exhibition in Telluride in September. I’ll be sending over a couple of very big Ruins pieces and the remaining coal mining panels but need to fill approximately seven metres of wall space. My plan is to create four small (for me) abstract pieces inspired by the history of Telluride. It was originally a mining town, part of the gold and silver rush in Colorado in the 19th century and was notoriously difficult to access. I’m fascinated by the feats of engineering that supported its expansion …. much like the canals, railways and navigable levels that supported coal mining here in Manchester. I’m also going to make a couple of small Mill Tower pieces which will link in with the large Ruins pieces. So busy but in the happiest of ways!

Unfortunately the number of sign ups has been low since I launched the workshop just over a year ago. Even when offered at a reduced price. So I’ve decided to change how it is offered moving forward.

Originally offered with 12 months access and support via monthly Zoom meetings it is now going to be offered with lifetime access but without support via Zoom. I will continue to support students via email.

And the great news is that I’ve reduced the cost from £300 to £120! You can find out more details here.

(I will be running Zoom meetings for existing students until the end of April 2026 and will continue to add the recordings to the workshop so they will be there for new students to watch).

In other news ….. the house will go on the market in the next few days, I’ll post again when it is available to view online.

Artefact 2

First of all, a very big thank you to everybody who came to see me at The Scottish Quilting Show in Glasgow. I feel like I already have a bunch of textile buddies in North Ayrshire and we haven’t even moved yet! And thank you to the judges and sponsors of the open competition. Artefact 2 won gold prize in the new professional makers category and I got my first ever rosette! Absolutely thrilled and the rosette is now pinned to my design wall. The prize money was also very welcome …. I treated myself to some threads and a slap up breakfast at Nardinis in Largs before heading back home.

Back home means yet more sorting as we get the house ready to sell. Two tip runs yesterday and today I am jet spraying the front path before painting the door step, gate etc. Yes it’s an exciting life! Luckily I am getting about 3 hours each day in the studio focused on making art. I’m currently sewing sleeves on Shoreline II and have the potential fabrics for Shoreline III pinned on my design wall. Over the next week or two I will be making screens and printing fabric for the pieces I need to make for my exhibition in Telluride, USA in September. Exciting times!

For the first time since my very first show in 2018 I am actually ready for The Scottish Quilting Show with a few days to spare! Normally I’m busy folding fabric late into the evening before we head off. I could take a few days off. Hmm … that doesn’t sound much like me so instead I’ll be busy sorting more stuff out in the house and doing a bit of printing. I’m loving the better balance I have in my life without the constant string of deadlines associated with running a teaching studio. There is a lot of work still to do before we can put the house (and studio) on the market but there is also plenty of time to work in the studio, to meet up with friends, to roll over in bed for an extra 30 minutes, to settle down with a good book. I’m blessed!

And I am looking forward to seeing some of you at the show. It takes place at the SECC in Glasgow from Thursday 6th to Saturday 8th March. I’m on Stand M19 and will have lots of fabric to sell as well as some quilts that I’d love to find new homes for. I’ll also have my books, dyes, screens etc. I’ll be joined by best friend Ruth Brown who some of you also know.

Even if you can’t make the show you can still take advantage of this years show special - 50% off the cost of my Simply Screen Printing online workshop reducing it from £300 to £150. Please use the code SSP50. The code is valid for the whole month of March!

And I hope you will join me! This is the only show that I’ll be doing this year and it is my favourite. It takes place in Hall 4 of the SECC in Glasgow between Thursday 6th and Saturday 8th March. Opening hours are 10am to 4.30pm. The discount code above will get you (and your friends) cheaper tickets. You can find me on stand M19 which is on the far left hand wall as you enter the show. I’m between the lovely Jo Avery and Uist Strands. And you can find out more about the show here.

I’ve been exhibiting at this show since 2018 and the Scottish Quilting part of it has grown and grown attracting quilting tutors and artists from across the UK. It shares the hall with the Creative Craft Show but what started as a little bit at one end now covers over half the hall. It isn’t on the scale of Festival of Quilts but lots of textile groups have small exhibition spaces and the quality and quantity of competition quilts has improved year on year. I’ve even entered a piece into the new Professional Makers category!

I will be demonstrating screen printing on my stand and will be selling my books, dyes, screens etc and my Wonky Print Inspiration Packs as per normal. But this year I will also have lots of ‘sale’ fabrics. As part of clearing the studio for the big move to Scotland later this year I’ve created 45 Hand Dyed Scrap Bags from the fabric pile below. All hand dyed by me the cotton with pieces range from a few inches square to 10 - 12 inch pieces. At £10 for approx. 200g (1.25 square metre) of hand dyed fabric I think they are a bargain! I’ll also have a box of Randoms - pieces of printed, stamped, resist dyed, discharged (and more) fabrics that I’ve made over the years demonstrating different ways of adding colour to fabric. Most are fat quarter size and I’m selling them for £2 a piece so come and have a rummage!

I’ll be putting any packs / pieces that don’t sell on my online shop after the show for those who can’t make it. But for those of you that can visit the show please stop by and have a natter!

Breakdown Printed Fabrics

Work towards the big move is going well and I think we are still on target to put the house on the market in March although it might be on the 31st! Some areas are looking really good. We cleared all the book cases on the first floor landing and had the hall, stairs, landing and more stairs decorated last week. A new (cheap) carpet will go in next week. We also decluttered the kitchen so that it could be decorated at the same time. The cellars are mostly clear and son Joe has made lots of progress on his and Rileys (grandson) rooms. And I’m about 2/3 through the studio. Big pat on the back!

Next is the ‘dining’ room which is mostly a dumping ground for books, magazines, jigsaws, coats, bags etc and then there is my husbands study. Hmm ….. it is going to be a challenging few weeks. Luckily I can really only sort stuff for a couple of hours at a time before I loose the will to live and am forced, yes forced, to retreat to my studio. For the sake of my sanity.

And I’ve been having a wonderful time printing lots of fabric and working on new art. I’ve been using breakdown printing (what else) to create a palette fabrics that range in colour from a slightly muted blue through some beautiful chromatic greys to a slightly muted brown. I’ve adjusted my printing technique to create fabrics in differing values. The collection is inspired by the colours of the shoreline at Largs, the north ayrshire town that I hope to call home soon. I have one quilt nearly finished and am making good progress on a second piece. Their compositions are simple and abstract. As always I want the printed fabrics to be the stars of the show! As I think about composition I have been thinking about the effect of place on my mental state, a theme I explored several years ago in my Dunure series. I think about family stuff and the path my life has taken in recent years. And I look forward anxiously. So much hard work, so many uncertainties. The one certainty is art. It is my carrot.