With less than a week to go I am getting very excited about Festival of Quilts!

I have two pieces showing this year. Ruins 1 was shortlisted for Fine Art Quilt Masters. The Festival website has photos of all the shortlisted pieces. No names are listed yet although some pieces are very recognizable. I am totally overwhelmed to be showing alongside some of my favourite art quilters. I cannot wait to see Ruins and suspect I might shed a tear or two!

I also have a piece, After Images, in the CQ Elements gallery. The standard of entrants in previous years has always been very high so I'm really looking forward to seeing all the other pieces.

I will only have 1 day at Festival this year so I will need to be selective about what I try to see - there are simply too many galleries and competition quilts to see in one day. Top of my list are the Christine Chester gallery, the Quilts 30 gallery and the Through Our Hands gallery. And, of course, I will need to save time to visit the traders!

In preparation for Festival I have spent some time updating my website. I have given the Ruins series it's own page. With 3 pieces completed, 1 at the stitching stage and one on the design wall this series has well and truly arrived. And I couldn't be happier with it - it feels like I have found my voice!

Life doesn't always follow a straight path and it has thrown a real curve ball at my family over the last couple of weeks. I've escaped into my studio for the odd 30 minutes as being in that calm, wonderful space has recharged my batteries better than a nap! I've made slow progress on the next Ruins piece but that is all. I did however get one piece of good news - my After Images quilt has been accepted into the Contemporary Quilt Group 'Elements' gallery at Festival of Quilts next month. I'm really looking forward to seeing this exhibition as the subject 'Element' is open to so many interpretations.

We have just returned from a family holiday in Scotland timed to coincide with our daughters Degree Show and Graduation. Jess has got a 1st in the Environmental Art and Sculpture programme at Glasgow School of Art - needless to say the whole family is very proud of her! Rather than spend a fortune on hotels to stay in Glasgow for a couple of days we rented a lovey cottage in the costal village of Dunure for the full week. Dunure has a small harbor, a ruined castle and a couple of peebly beaches.

I have taken dozens of images which may, or may not, form the inspiration for a textile piece. So lots of images of stones, moss, wild flowers, waves and more forming a mostly neutral palette. However I thought I would share a few images of a derelict boat, stranded on the side of the harbor. The strong colours seemed rather out of place so they immediately caught my eye. I absolutely love the patterns formed as the layers of coloured paint have eroded and weathered. It looks positively psychedelic!

I heard this week that one of my Ruins pieces has been shortlisted for Fine Art Quilt Masters. This is my first 'major' exhibition and the thought that my work will be shown alongside well known textile artists is completely overwhelming. I still feel rather tearful! It means so much to me. Whilst I am disappointed that I was not accepted into the European Quilt Trienniel submitting work to these two prestigous exhibitions was a real stretch for me. I have enjoyed pushing myself to produce my best possible work but did not really think my work was good enough yet. I  am delighted to be proved wrong. And determined to keep pushing myself to achieve more.

There are 19 artists shortlisted but I don't think the list will published before the exhibition opens at Festival of Quilts in August. Can't wait to see my work hung, I may just burst into tears!

It has been a busy few weeks since my last post. The studio has been rebuilt (albeit with a long list of finishing touches), I've had a week in the US and 3 days in Scotland with the day job and my grandson has had Chicken Pox (poor lamb!). At times it has felt like a train wreck but today the sun has shone and life seems calm again. I've started working on the next Ruins piece on the design wall. All the printed fabrics have been cut into 'bricks' and I'm building the background. I've also played with thin strips to create buildings. Not sure if this will work so I will leave it pinned up for a while.

As per my previous blog about the 'rebuild' of my studio I have sorted out a selection of fabric packs for sale on my Etsy site. These are combinations of overs from dyeing runs, pieces that didn't dye perfectly and pieces that I dyed for my own art but have decided not to use. I have also reduced the price on 4 pieces of wall art already listed on Etsy.

You can find my shop by clicking on the Etsy button to the right of this blog. I'm also offering a 10% discount across all items - just use the coupon code STUDIOSALE2015 during checkout.

Around all of the disruption in the studio I have managed to produce some really lovely pieces of cloth using breakdown printing. (I have produced some ugly pieces too!). I start by spreading thickened procion dyes onto the back of silkscreens then embedded various objects including metal joining plates before leaving to dry. On a nice sunny day this only takes a couple of hours. But I live in Manchester so sometimes I have to dry the screens indoors overnight. Once the screens are completely dry I pull through with plain thickened paste. Sometimes I keep the prints separate and quite pale. Other times I print off until the screen is completing spent. The printed cloth is left overnight to batch then washed out. Wonderful!

I am a great one for making plans, writing lists and organizing my working methods to give maximum output especially in the studio where time is very precious. I am so much more relaxed and productive when I have a plan. But life has a way of disrupting plans! I've been sharing my studio with my son Callum for the last year to support him starting his own picture framing business. It has been wonderful to be able to do this and we have worked around each other reasonably well. He uses it 2 or 3 days in the week and I use it in the evenings and at weekends. We each have to tidy up a bit more than we would do if we weren't sharing but it has been a real pleasure to see his business grow. And I have got to see some wonderful pieces of photography, print and even textiles. The great news is that he is now moving into his own studio. The bad news is the period of chaos that we are going through!

The date he got access to his new space has been a bit fluid. As has how many hours he can spend getting the space ready (it needs a lot of work!). So the date he moves out of my studio has become very fluid. He also still needs to earn money so he has been coming into the studio at odd times including weekends to do framing. When he moves out next weekend he will be taking his big work bench and the glass and paper store we build on the back wall. This will involve dismantling them. And then he needs to build me a new print bench and some more storage spaces. All of which creates sawdust. Lots of sawdust. Which means I will be packing up and covering up all my stuff for a period of at least two weeks.

I don't actually mind being without a studio for a couple of weeks because I'm going to end up with more space (and no sawdust). But uncertainty is a powerful distraction. Although I'm making good progress on the goals I set for April and May I have struggled to enjoy the hours that I have spent at my print bench and am not as happy with the results as normal. As Steven Pressfield would say the Resistance is very strong in my life right now.

So my coping strategy - shift focus to activities that don't require 'creative' input. And to activities that I can stop and start at short notice. I have been busy finishing 'finished' pieces - that is binding or stretching, adding labels and photographing. The extra space means that I'll be able to move all of my 'stuff' out of various nooks and crannies in the house. Including all my quilts and my many boxes of fabric. So I'm using this period of chaos to think about how to store quilts and to decide if I even want to keep all of them. I'm also looking at all my boxes of fabric and wondering the same thing. Maybe a 'studio' sale on Etsy?

The key thing is that I am still 'turning up every day' and 'doing the work'. So what if it is not the work I thought I would be doing. Steven Pressfield would be proud!

One of my goals for this spring was to finish at least 8 of my Hidden Message skyscraper pieces. Having realized that my older Hidden Message pieces would be too big for the Etcetera exhibition at Platform Gallery, Clithero (12 - 27th September) I intentionally set out to create pieces that were 12 inches wide by 30 inches high. I had to dye more fabric, print using a smaller scale and finally, think of a more appropriate construction process. Hence the skyscraper pieces which I have documented in earlier posts. I constructed and stitched 4 pieces during the Rydal retreat in February. Over the last few weeks I have completed another 4 pieces and have 'finished' all 8. In this case finishing has meant stretching over canvas, adding labels and picture hooks. I brought a box of 10 12 x 30inch own brand stretched canvases from Jacksons Art Supplies who have a great selection of canvases (and other lovely things!) and give a decent saving if you buy in bulk. The method I used for stretching my pieces has been really well described by fellow Etcetera member Helen Conway. I used double sided tape instead of contact adhesive and finished the backs by covering the edges of textile with a self adhesive fabric tape (well I am a neat freak!). I added fabric labels to the back of each piece. I used an Epson S22 printer with pigment inks to print onto hand dyed fabric. I love this method of finishing my work. And I have ticked a box!