Here is a link to an article on the BBC website that has been flagged in both the UK Contemporary Quilt and SAQA yahoo discussion groups. BBC on creativity and failure . It is only a 5 minute read but makes the case that truly good outcomes don't usually happen at the first attempt. How right that is! The article was written in response to a new exhibition in the US called Permission to Fail in which participants were asked to show all their mess ups and drafts. It makes the point that we are used to seeing the perfect end results and don't get to see the work taken to get there. That may have been the case prior to the advent of social media but is it the case now? I don't think so. As artists we can each chose exactly what we show the world but many of us, myself included, now share our work in progress in our blogs. Personally I like sharing my techniques and my progress. Of course I only want to show my best work in exhibitions but 'amongst friends' I value the responses I get. So I'm going to keep on showing my mess ups!

We have just returned from a wonderfully relaxing week in Dunure. The weather was absolutely shocking for most of the time but we didn't mind in the least. Lots of quiet time reading. And some not so quiet time playing family board games (we are a competitive bunch and take Monopoly seriously!). Needless to say I took my sewing machine and managed a few hours working on the small Dunure pieces. I set my sewing machine up near a window that looks out to sea - the cottage is only a few feet from the beach. I probably would have done more sewing but the view was wonderfully distracting.

Dunure is on the Ayrshire coast so took a beating from Storm Abigail. The worst of the weather hit overnight whilst we were asleep but we did take a quick walk out the following morning to take some photos. The sea was pretty magnificent!

Here are the first two samples. Each is approx. 12 x 12 inches. I used 505 basting spray to hold the cut pieces of printed cotton in place. Machine quilted in straight lines (what else!). At some stage I will finish by stretching over canvas. But for now I'm going to start on Dunure 3. I have so many ideas, it is a great feeling!

Having printed and over printed my fabrics I have now started to work on composition. I have challenged myself to create a piece inspired by stillness, by inner calm, by tranquility. All of my work to date has been inspired, if only partially, by physical objects. Although the Ruins pieces are quite abstract I was able to think of their composition in terms of 'bricks' and 'buildings'. This time around is proving much more difficult. Can I break free from looking for literal representations and create truly abstract pieces? I started by pinning fabrics to the design wall to see how they interacted. I moved them around a few times. Then a few times more. Looking at them through the eye piece on my camera helped but I still struggled to see my path forward.

I decided to change the scale and started cutting small pieces out and working with those. (I remembered how using paper 'L's to isolate small areas of textile revealed some lovely details). Adding small pieces of solid colour had an immediate impact. All the fabrics have been printed with colours from my Dunure colour family so they work together from a colour standpoint. And the printing all has linear elements which also helps creating a 'pleasing' composition.

This feels like a breakthrough! At last! I still cannot see how to get from here to a large scale piece but am going to have some fun making little fabric collages. My ugly ducklings are have not transformed into beautiful swans yet but they are no longer ugly.

So first a little bit of good news. I heard on Friday that Ruins 4 has been selected to show in an exhibition called 'Structures' which will show at The Old Fire Station Gallery in Henley-on-Thames from 19th to 24th November. The exhibition has been organised and curated by Kate Findlay. Kate is well known for her incredible series of art quilts inspired by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the physics behind this truly amazing machine. Check out her website.

Knowing that Ruins 4 is heading out into the world has spurred me on to tackle a job I have been putting off for the last couple of weeks. Adding facings to Ruins 5. I have been using facing strips to finish my quilts for years but have always struggled with bulky corners. At times I have resorted to bashing them flat with a mallet (it works!). But recently I saw a link to an article by the art quilter Terry Aske that promised square, flat corners. She gives really clear, step by step instructions. The difference between her method and the method I have used to date is that she doesn't take the facing strips on the left and right hand side of the quilt to the upper and lower edges. Click on her name to get details. All I can say is THAT IT WORKS! Thank you Terry!

I adding more monoprinted bands on top of the glassine printed fabrics. Using paper 'L' frames focuses the eye on the wonderful texture this method produces. I am very happy with these although I'm not sure if they can technically be called monoprints now!

Added more breakdown printing onto the original breakdown pieces was less successful - there is a very fine line between creating depth of texture and loosing all the lovely fragile marks.

Well I am a long, long way from transforming my ugly ducklings into beautiful swans but I have had some success using the soya wax screen on a piece of really awful fabric. Again I found that using white 'L' frames to select small sections of fabric really helped me to evaluate the results. As a big piece of fabric it does absolutely nothing for me. But in small sections it shows promise!

I also took a piece that was original printed with the soya wax screen and added more lines, mostly in a mid grey colour selected from the same Dunure colour family. The resulting fabric is also best viewed in small sections but is definitely starting to spark!

As well as stitching lots and lots of lines over the last couple of weeks I have also spent a few hours doing 'wet work' inspired by calm and tranquility. I was fairly pleased with the pieces I had printed over the August bank holiday but this time around all I seem to have made is a bunch of ugly ducklings! Using the Dunure colour family I made some more pieces by monoprinting off glassine and by using breakdown printing. I also did some scraping with thickened dye and some dry brushing. Usually I can predicate, and somewhat control, the outcome when I layer up colours from within a colour family. This time most of the pieces came out rather dirty brown or dull looking. I think I have lost my mojo!

But I like a challenge so I sat and studied the pieces. I used paper 'L' frames to isolate sections of each cloth. This helped me decide which pieces needed more of the same - for example adding more bands of colour by monoprinting off glassine. And which pieces needed the addition of a layer of something different - for example adding fine lines using a soya wax screen on top of scrapped fabric. I also hung some of the really ugly pieces side by side to see if there were any 'sparks' between them. I now have separate piles to work through over the coming days and weeks. Let's hope I can find my mojo again!

Not everybody would find pleasure in stitching so many metres of straight lines but, thankfully, I do. With an average speed of 20 metres per hour it has taken over 22 hours to complete the background quilting on this large Ruins piece. Keeping the lines straight and equally spaced requires just enough concentration to stop this being a mindless task. Instead I have found it to be mindful. Whilst stitching my mind stops racing, stops worrying, stops trying to solve all the problems in my life.

I've hinted at some 'life' issues in previous posts. For the last few months my husband and I have been providing 24 hour care for our eldest son who has been in a very dark and troubled state of mind. It has been a distressing and exhausting time. Although we have had great support from our family, friends and from my 'day job' I don't think I could have coped without having my studio and my art to take refuge in. Working in series has meant that there has always been something to work on. From stitching straight lines on days when my mind needed calming to composing new pieces on days when I have felt stronger. There is a simple joy in stepping into a studio full of colour, in working with cloth, in stitching straight lines!

Over the last few weeks I have also pieced together another large scale Ruins piece. The composition of the background is quite different from the earlier works and it took me a long time to audition all the 'bricks' into a something that I was happy with. Tiredness probably played a part as I'm usually much more confident when I am working on composition. The piece is 275cm wide by 140cm high and has 'light', 'medium' and 'dark' bands. Over the coming weeks I will stitch using many, many more parallel lines. Some would find the prospect boring or maybe even intimidating - me, if find it joyful.