Well it is that time of year! And it has been quite a year for me as an artist. Lots of 'firsts' and very few disappointments. So, here is my recap.

The biggest thrill of the year was having Ruins 1 shortlisted in Fine Art Quilt Masters. My first selection into a major exhibition and I still can't quite believe it. I had 3 other pieces selected into exhibitions in 2015. Sin City 2 was shown in 'Inspirations' at the Knitting and Stitching Show, Olympia. After Image was selected to show in CQ 'Elements' at Festival of Quilts and is still touring. And Ruins 4 was shown in 'Structures' at The Old Fire Station, Henley-on-Thames.

Another big first for me was my first exhibition as part of Etcetera. Transitions showed at The Platform Gallery in September. There was a steep learning curve but it was worth it! We've had great feedback and have already confirmed exhibitions at Ryedale Folk Museum and Gallery in March 2016, Stockport Art Gallery at a date to be confirmed in 2016 and Didsbury Parsonage in January 2017.

Although I have had this website for a couple of years I only started this blog at the end of December in 2014. This is my 54th post which I reckon is pretty good going. I don't think I will ever be a 'prolific' blogger but the comments I have received along the way have meant a lot to me - thank you all!

And finally this has been the year where I have found my voice. A horrible and much over used phrase but most people will know what I mean. Hidden Message was my first series and it taught me a lot about building from a strong idea or base. But it did not 'flow' from piece to piece. The Ruins series has and continues to flow through my mind, throwing up endless possibilities. I finished 4 Ruins pieces in 2015, have two more in production and lots of scribbled sketches to work from. Ruins felt so 'natural', so 'right' but very different from Hidden Message that I worried it might be a one-off. Thankfully in the second half of 2015 I found myself developing a new colour family, a new collection of fabrics and finally new pieces in a series I'm calling Still / Storm. The inspiration behind this new body of work is very different to that for Ruins and has been inevitably influenced by my home life. But when I look at the two I see something that is recognisably 'me'. And that feels pretty amazing.

I'd like to wish everybody who has taken the time to read my blog the very best for 2016. I look forward to sharing it with you.

Leah

Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of this blog. I began with a post called '15 years of blessings'  based on a story told by American singer songwriter Jim White. It goes 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.

This time last year I counted having healthy and happy children as one of my blessings. The last six months have shown just how fragile the health and happiness of our oldest son was. But through some dark, dark days we were supported by a great family and wonderful friends. In particular I will be forever grateful for the support of the Etcetera ladies and my good friend Ruth Brown. And I was reminded just how fierce and powerful an emotion love is. So today, when I count my blessings I include my children. Full stop.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas. And don't forget to tell your loved ones that you love them!

After several weeks at the bench I am now happy with my collection of fabrics. Some are beautiful in their own right and some will be beautiful when cut into strips. The majority of the 18 square metres of fabric will be used to make 'Still' pieces but I've included some darker fabrics to get me thinking more about 'Storm' pieces. I love pinning them to my design board - so much more fulfilling than having a neatly stacked pile!

Doubtless I will discover that I am missing a vital combination of colour and line. But for now I have finished with 'wet' process. So I have given the studio a really good clean (including cleaning windows!) - why do I like cleaning my studio more than my house? For that matter why do I love ironing my printed fabrics but hate ironing clothes? I suspect some of you know the answer!

Thought it was worth sharing a link to this blog entry by Lisa Call in which she writes ''Just making art is not all it takes to becoming a better artist. We could spend years churning out the same average artwork over and over unless we take the time to practice our artwork with the goal in mind of becoming better.''

Lisa has a great blog. Yes, she uses it to actively market her art and her teaching. But she shares so much along the way and she often gets me thinking. In this piece Lisa talks about the things we can all do to push ourselves beyond average and sites working in series as the mechanism she uses to grow and develop. And I couldn't agree more. For me the great advantage of working in series is that you don't have to try and resolve all your good ideas in a single piece. Before making a conscious decision to work in series I would often feel paralysed and unable to even start work because I could not see how to get all my ideas and thoughts into one piece. Or I would get disheartened half way through working on a piece when I realised that it would have more energy if I had used turquoise instead of moss green. Knowing that you're going to make lots of pieces around a theme or an inspiration is wonderfully liberating. The development of ideas from one piece to the next is a form of continuous improvement that prevents us getting stuck on the Okay Plateau.

So in the spirit of sharing I will let you into a secret - the first piece I made in my Hidden Message series is better known as No Time for Tea and bears absolutely no resemblance to the pieces that followed. I knew that I wanted to say something about modern Chinese society and how weird it is that the population aspires to a Western lifestyle whilst living in a country with single party politics and rampant censorship. The piece didn't have the gravity I was aiming for but it did contain elements that I wanted to develop further. In one sense it was a failure but I love it anyway!

I've spent the last couple of weeks at the bench printing fabrics. I love it! It is a little bit like a merry-go-round, once you're on it is difficult to stop. But stopping and assessing is really important so yesterday I cleaned, tidied and finished rinsing out and ironing the fabrics. This morning I looked at what I had printed. I used the samples that I have been stitching to help and used the trick of framing small sections. I have printed approximately 18 square metres of fabric. About half is 'perfect' and so will be put through a final machine wash to make them ready for use. The other half need additional work. Some just need a few lines adding but some need some serious intervention! (And, being honest, a couple probably need throwing in the bin!). These will all be soda soaked again and hopefully printed over the next week. So lots more fun at the bench!

I read a great interview with 3D embroidery artist Isobel Currie on the TextileArtist.org website about her workspace. It is a 1.7 x 2.8m portion of the family dining room. She makes the point that the working environment is critical to the enjoyment of the creative process but also to the quality of the outcomes. For her it is important to be creating within a domestic environment rather than in a separate studio space. That brings with it size restrictions and, for Isobel, the need to work in a tidy and well organised way. Have a look at the interview. It is illustrated with photos of her beautifully colourful craft cupboard. Compared to Isobel, and many of my artist friends I have a huge workspace. My studio is 8.5 x 4.5m with two big print benches, a dedicated sewing area and three design walls (albeit none of them is as big as I really need!). I could, in theory, be really messy and still have room to create. But alas that just doesn't work for me. I need a tidy, clean and well organised environment in order to 'free up' my mind to create. Which is maybe reflected in the fact that my art always has strong structural elements and in the fact that I take pleasure in sewing in my ends even when I am machine stitching hundreds of parallel lines!

In previous posts I've documented the development of my Dunure colour family and my experiments in printing a palette of fabrics that might represent the idea of 'stillness' (remember all those ugly ducklings!). I've collaged and stitched enough samples to tell me that Still, and now Storm as well, will grow to be a series of pieces. So how to get started?

First things first - throw away the fabrics that don't work. And the collaged samples that never even made it to the sewing machine. And I don't mean put them away somewhere just in case. I mean throw them away. This is an anathema to many quilters but has been an important shift in behaviour for me and one that is wonderfully liberating.

Next, start printing lots of fabric. Because I know that this is going to be a series of works I aim to print 15 - 20 square metres of fabric over the next few weeks. Having spent time experimenting and sampling I know to use 4 techniques: breakdown printing using 'barcode' like screens, screenprinting using soya wax screens, monoprinting using glassine and, for the darker fabrics, scrapping through with thickened dyes. I know that this colour family has a tendency to give muddy results when the individual colours blend together so I need to take my time and allow one layer of colour to dry before applying a second layer. And for the paler fabrics I know that I need a very delicate touch.

And to fill in around printing I will continue to sample compositions but also different methods of construction. This increases the likelihood that the first full scale pieces are successful. After all, I am totally OK with throwing pieces of fabric and small samples in the bin but larger scale pieces?? Maybe not.

I made a decision several years ago to stop making art specifically to fit themed calls for entry or challenges. Instead I decided to make the art that I wanted to make and to make it to my own timescale. That said, I am not adverse to entering pieces into juried or curated exhibitions if I have a piece that I think 'fits'. I try to keep track of interesting calls and it looks like 2016 is going to be rich with opportunities. Especially as my 'Still' series might turn out to be a 'Still / Storm' series. So I have been thinking ahead and figuring out what I need to work on and when. First I listed all the possible deadlines in chronological order along with the pieces (finished, in progress or still in my head) that would fit each of the calls. I also listed future Etcetera exhibitions (two booked for 2016 already!) and what I needed to do for these. And I realised that if I worked 100% on the Still / Storm series for the next 3 months I could have pieces ready to enter 3 SAQA calls. And that I would have time afterwards to complete work on large Ruins pieces for open calls later in the year.  All done with pen and paper over a cup of good coffee! A second cup of coffee was need to turn this realisation into a simple sheet with activities listed in blocks of four weeks for the next 6 months. I thought about planning by the week but figured that my other lives (family and day job) might not want to cooperate and decided to avoid the stress. This level of planning feels 'comfortable' but time will tell if my expectations of what I can achieve are realistic.

And as an aside - one person who has mastered planning is my fellow Etcetera member, Helen Conway. Helen is the QUEEN of time management! She has written extensively on her blog about the various (free apps) she uses to track pretty much her whole life (or so it seems to me!). And now she is reaping the dividends as she needs to create a significant body of new work for her first solo exhibition next March.  Go Helen!

Following on from my post about creativity and failure I thought I would share this. You may remember those ugly ducklings and how some of the paler ones have turned into really interesting compositions. Well there were also a few really, really ugly ducklings that were much darker and muddier than I had expected. Not to be defeated I have played with composition using those fabrics and have been very surprised by the results and where it has sent my mind wondering.

At first I thought this was a failure - it doesn't embody the idea of stillness. Instead the darker colours and linear marks reminded of the rocks on Dunure beach on a stormy day. I had been trying to capture the feelings of calm, tranquility, stillness that I felt when I sat on the beach. That feeling of being able to shed all my worries. But here I have a piece that, is somewhat representative of all the anguish, confusion and grief that I have felt this year dealing with my son's mental ill health. Could I create a body of work that represents two divergent emotional states?

I think that maybe I can. Maybe I should be working on Still and Storm?