I've had a great week in my studio printing and discharging 4 pieces of cloth simultaneously as well as continuing to stitch the next Ruins piece. But, for various reasons I can't share images right now. So instead I thought I would share the story of my studio. I am an incredibly lucky person. I have always had a room to work in even when the kids were still at home. There were years when I had a decent sized room and years when I was squeezed into the box room. Once the last one left home I was able to move into the biggest bedroom in the house which had the added benefit of having a small ensuite. So instead of dyeing fabric in the kitchen I was able to set up a small wet area in my studio. For the first time I was able to experiment with screenprinting and lots of other wet processes. I took the time to paint the room white, to add good lighting and to build lots of storage shelves and cupboards. And it really paid dividends. Both in quantity but more importantly in the quality of my work. Having a good space to work caused a step change in my thinking and in my intention.

But after a couple of years I realized that I needed a much bigger wet studio. And so in summer of 2013 we started to renovate an old outbuilding that sat at the back of our property. We brought our house about 16 years ago and always intended doing 'something' with the building but never quite figured out what. So over the years it has been a garage, a teenage hangout, a smoking shed (how come my kids all smoke when we've never let them be around smokers???) and a general dumping ground.

We were put in touch with a great builder by Helen Conway www.helenconwaydesign.com  (big thanks Helen!) who took up the challenge of creating a warm, dry, well lit studio at minimum cost. We used windows and French doors that were 'seconds', recycled timbers where we could and second hand cupboards. The one thing we really went over the top on was insulation as I knew I wouldn't use a studio that was cold and damp in the winter.

The builder finished work on 23rd December 2013. We didn't have the money to pay him to do the painting and finishing - so for the next eight weeks myself and Callum (middle son) painted, sanded, sealed and tiled. It was incredibly hard work but at the end of February I was able to use the studio for printing and dyeing. I had cupboards, a working sink and a massive print table. No cupboard doors and over half of the studio still full of timber and part built cupboards. But I was in heaven!

Studio life took a bit of an unexpected turn last spring - Cal was finishing up his Interactive Art degree and looking around for something to pay the rent that would still allow him to work on his music and art. He decided to start a picture framing business as he loves working with hands (and couldn't abide the thought of working full time in retail or in an office). So my studio has become our studio. Which meant building units to store tools, as well as glass and mountboard. And building Cal a bench to work on.

Today we share the space. He uses it 2 to 3 days a week and I use it in the evenings and at weekends. We have to constantly clean up as sawdust and fabric don't mix but it has been a real pleasure seeing his business take off. Hopefully he will move into his own studio in a few months at which time I'll take over the whole studio.

Having this wonderful space has allowed me to make some big changes in the way I work. Last year I really 'got the hang' of working in series and have started to work on two series at the same time. I am able to work on multiple pieces without constantly moving stuff around. I have different pieces at different stages in their creation. I work in my studio every day, even on those days when my day job has been tiring and frustrating. Unlocking the door and stepping into my studio fills me with energy. It is allowing me to develop as an artist.

Another piece of gorgeous fabric created this weekend. I made a breakdown screen by spreading a layer of Formosol discharge paste on the back of a screen and embedding some metal joining plates. (Yes - B&Q is a great source of interesting bits and bobs!). After letting the screen dry completely I printed through the screen using plain print paste onto a piece of fabric that I had previously printed with the darker colours from the rust / black colour family. I kept printing with the screen until all the discharge paste had peeled off onto the fabric.

I left the fabric overnight to dry before using an iron (carefully) from the back of the fabric to activate the discharge paste. The black areas of the fabric discharged very easily to a chalky cream colour. Discharging the rust areas was more difficult and left a golden yellow colour. Ironing the cloth baked the print paste into the cloth so lots of hot soapy water and agitation was needed to wash the fabric. But the results were worth it!

My good friend Ruth Brown (http://stonecreektextiles.co.uk/) has come to stay and play for a few days. And we are having great fun in the studio! Ruth and I meet at a C2C course several years ago and have been 'workshop buddies' since then. We've also worked together in her studio but this is the first time she has worked in my studio.

As well as working on our own projects we often have a technique that we want to experiment with. This time it is discharge. We've both used different media and techniques in the past so our time together has been about sharing knowledge but also about asking 'what if?'.

And one 'what if?' has lead to a really surprising result. We wondered what would happen if you used discharge paste and thickened procion dyes at the same time? So we took a piece of pre-soda soaked fabric and printed it with a Formosol paste (Formosol powder dissolved in a little warm water then mixed with print paste). We let that dry then used an open screen to apply thickened dye. The piece was left to dry overnight. We then ironed it carefully from the back to activate the discharge paste before rinsing and washing thoroughly. The discharge process definitely worked but somehow we have got shadow images and don't really understand why. Guess we will just have to keep playing tomorrow!

Although I am a bit of a neat freak one of my favourite methods for creating a jagged background is really messy. It is a one of those processes that gives the best results if you apply multiple layers of colour. Yesterday I took a piece of pre soda soaked cotton and started to apply thickened dyes through an open screen. I used a rust and half strength black colour family (as taught by Leslie Morgan at C2C). I roughly scrunched the fabric then screened on top, opened the fabric out, re-scrunched, screened on top ... over and over again with different colours. After adding quite a bit of colour I opened the fabric out and left on my bench overnight to dry.

Today I applied a second layer of colour using the same method and same colour family. I have left the fabric overnight to batch. Tomorrow I will rinse, wash and dry the fabric and assess the colours. I'll then soda the fabric again and keep going. It is time consuming process but the results are wonderful!

Yesterday I sent off my entry to the European Quilt Triennial. A big moment! And I could not be happier with the way the quilt turned out. The rules prohibit me showing the full quilt but here is a detail.

I have always had a fascination with buildings. I am a city girl and will take a cityscape over a picture of green, nature, countryside things any day. Cityscapes feature in some of my earlier works such as Sin City 2. My current Hidden Message series is inspired, in part, by high rise buildings in Shanghai. The spark that ignited the ideas behind the Ruins quilt was an online list of 50 abandoned buildings I came across quite by accident last year. From there I found the work of French photographer Martin Vaisse (www.flickr.com/photos/pheizy). His photos of abandoned factories are just stunning.

So I started looking at the textures and colours in old buildings. When I visited the Cloth and Memory exhibition at Salts Mill I took more photos of the building than of the art!

I spent last summer creating lots of fabulous cloth using a rust and black colour family. The good weather meant I was able to do lots of breakdown printing which seemed very appropriate. As an experiment I had a thermofax made from a photo of one of the breakdown pieces. I used this to build layers of line and colour.

Once I had a reasonable collection of cloth I started to construct 'brick walls'. I played around with the size of the bricks and with the overall dimensions of the pieced quilt tops. Ruins 1 and Ruins 2 (which is nearly finished) are both long thin pieces. They are meant to evoke a landscape. The quilting is dense but is not intended to distract from the textures and colours of the bricks.

I have a third piece in progress and a headful of ideas, both for printing more cloth and for making more quilts. I feel more comfortable with this series than I have with earlier work, including the Hidden Message series. It feels more intuitive, less forced. It feels like I have found my artistic voice.

Last year I read a review of a book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. I get fed the occasional 'how to be a better XYZ' as part of my day job and I am not a fan. But I felt like I needed some help in keeping focussed on my art, and the book was pretty cheap, so I thought 'what the heck'. And I am glad I did. Pressfield calls all the things that stop us achieving what we are truly meant to achieve 'the Resistance'. And most of them reside in ourselves. The book is an easy read, in turn humourous and somber. And it really resonated with me. I'm on my third read through and take the book with me when my day job takes me away from my studio. Over Christmas I brought and read his more recent book Turning Pro. The most basic message across both books is 'turn up, do the work, and don't let anything get in the way - don' let the resistence win'.

This week the Resistance was really strong. The first week in January is always miserable. Back to the day job after a couple of weeks without phone conferences, emails, reports and the realisation that I am very likely to be in the same place in 365 days. It is grey, cold and wet. And everybody everywhere is also miserable. And that was before turning on the news. For me the January blues was compounded by a stomach virus. But instead of soldiering on through I let the Resistance get me. For 3 evenings I watched TV and went to bed early. But I didn't sleep well. So on Thursday I went into the studio with the single goal of being in there two hours. Nothing more than that. But after I tidied some stuff that didn't need tidying I sat at my machine and I stitched. I turned up and I did the work. And woke up the next morning with a head full of quilt ideas.

This week was definitely not my most productive but I got back into the studio. And yesterday I heard that Sin City 2 will be shown in the CQ exhibition 'Inspirations' at Olympia later this year along side pieces from wonderful art quilters such as Janet Atherton and Kate Dowty and fellow Etcetera member Linda Bilsborrow. Go eat dust Resistance!

It is that time of year when traditionally some of us make grand statements about how we are going to change our lives. That has never worked for me. My 'big' decisions tend to creep up on me slowly. But once I make my mind up to do something I have a pretty good success rate. However I truly believe that I am even more likely to succeed if I make my decisions or my goals public. Which is one of the reasons why I have started this studio blog. So here goes! Last summer I decided that I wanted to create a new body of work from which I would submit pieces to the European Quilt Triennial and the Fine Art Quilt Masters (Festival of Quilts) in 2015. I also decided that I would rejoin SAQA so that I could submit a piece to their 'Concrete and Grasslands' call for entry in 2015. This is a pretty significant step up for me but, having spent the last couple of years focusing on developing my art, it does feel like the right time. And so far I am on track. The first piece in my new series Ruins is finished and will be entered into the European Quilt Triennial in the next couple of weeks. The second and third pieces are part way through quilting. And much more importantly I have a head full of ideas for the next pieces in the series. I'll share more about my inspiration for this series in future posts.

The other thing I want to focus on this year is social media and self promotion. In 2014 I met a goal of setting up an Etsy site to sell my hand dyed fabrics. The site looks great and I've thoroughly enjoyed dyeing and preparing the fabrics. But I am not selling anything. I am getting low numbers of hits but nowhere near enough. I also set up this website in 2014 and think it looks pretty good. But again I am not getting many hits. So 2015 is going to see me embrace Facebook and Pinterest. I am going to stop being a 'lurker' on chat sites and start contributing. All of which is definitely outside my comfort zone but then the most rewarding challenges often are!

Or more precisely glorious shades of teal, a light turquoise and a pale golden yellow. After the mayhem and excess of Christmas Day it has been lovely to spend the day in my studio dyeing fabric. A couple of years ago I took a 5 day Colour Studies Class with Leslie Morgan of C2C.(http://www.committedtocloth.uk/). It revolutionized how I use colour in my work. Leslie teaches a two step dyeing process that creates a family of 15 harmonious colours. One of the colour families I dyed during that class was the extended teal and brown family shown above. I have been using these fabrics in some of my Hidden Message pieces but needed to 'top up' my stash. So today I created 5 dye buckets - a dark, medium and light teal, a light turquoise and a pale golden yellow. I used a high immersion process and lots of agitation as I want fairly flat colour. I am a chemist in my day job so needless to say I keep detailed records of all my dyeing sessions. This allows me to reproduce colours fairly accurately. The dye buckets will be left overnight before I rinse and dry the fabrics. The second step will be carried out in dark, medium and light brown dye buckets. I will use a high immersion process again but with a little less agitation so that I end up with 22 different, slightly textured colours that go together perfectly!

There is a tale told by American singer songwriter Jim White that says something along the lines that you should count up your blessings, a minute here or an hour there, and put them in a jar. And if, at the end of your life those blessings add up to 15 years then you've had a pretty good life. My blessings have come in many forms; a loving and generous husband, happy and health kids, a wonderful grandson and a satisfying day job. But more recently my blessings have come from hours spent in my studio creating my art. I have stitched for as long as I can remember. Time working with fabric and thread has always brought me pleasure but somewhere along the path pleasure turned into passion. An interest became an obsession. A calling.

I define myself as a textile artist but I truly believe that art only exists when viewed by others. This studio blog is another step on a path that I am now committed to. But why a blog and why now? Why now is easy - 2015 is going to be an important year for me. As part of Etcetera, a group of 7 textile artists, I have my first gallery exhibition. Why a blog - because by documenting my progress it becomes a public statement of intent. Which is both terrifying and empowering. And, of course, a blog is a way of marketing myself and my art.

Those who know me will know that I am not a big user of social media - it takes time away from making art - so I will not be a prolific blogger. So expect posts once or sometimes twice a week. And expect them to be about what is happening in my studio and in my life as a textile artist.