Tomorrow we will be hanging the next Etcetera exhibition at Ryedale Folk Museum and Art Gallery. I've spent a good hour this evening walking around in circles trying to check if I have everything we might need packed and ready for an early start. Yes I wrote a check list a couple of weeks ago and have been diligently ticking off items as I have collected them but that hasn't stopped that slightly panicked feeling. After all it can't hurt to have a back up screw driver for the back up screw driver can it? And will one hammer really be enough?? And of course there is always something that is last minute - in this case it was getting handouts printed. I had planned to get them printed, collected and prepared at the weekend but life hadn't read my plan so now I'm sat folding 200 double sided A3 sheets in half. The things we do for our art!

Last week I spent 5 lovely days with 10 other members of the Contemporary Quilt group on a retreat at Rydal Hall in the Lake District. I took my ipad with the expectation that I would be able to blog whilst there. That didn't work out as the wireless network was too, too slow for Wordpress. I did, with some patience (and a little bit of swearing), manage to read my email and got the most wonderful news. My Ruins 4 quilt has been selected for Quilt Visions 2016! I floated on a cloud of smugness for the rest of the week!! Which must have been rather irritating for my fellow retreat members. Sorry about that. One of the great things about the retreat is the amount of sharing we do. We share ideas, we share materials and we find solutions to problems together. All done with lots of coffee, cake and the odd glass of wine. Everybody is encouraged to bring a book or books that they have found inspirational in the previous 12 months. There was a wonderful variety but I fell in love with this one. I think the level of neatness and precision appeals to my 'tidy' gene and it definitely got me thinking about how some of my breakdown prints would look as book covers. I am not somebody who uses sketchbooks or notebooks routinely as part of my design process but I do love the idea of owning them. Maybe making my own would encourage me to use them?

The next Etcetera exhibition opens at Ryedale Folk Museum and Art Gallery on Saturday 19th March. All seven members of the group meet in my studio yesterday to complete our preparations (and drink coffee, eat cake and share our work in progress of course!). As always it was a good day spent in good company and it was especially good to see Sandra Wyman who has been very ill recently. Afterwards I spend a very satisfying couple of hours attaching mirror plates to my Hidden Message pieces. 32 individual pieces that make up Hidden Message 2 and 3 (12 panels each) and the 'Skyscraper' set of 8 panels. And now I have a bench covered in artwork (mine and others) ready for the show. Wonderful!

One of the screens I use for my Ruins series has small rectangular windows permanently masked out using acrylic paint. It was a screen I originally used in my Hidden Message series. When I'm making other breakdown screens for Ruins I 'roll off' unused thickened dye onto this screen. I keep adding layers as I make and print more screens. The small screen often sits around for months until I decide it has enough dye on it. I then print through with thickened paste. And stand back and admire, lovely! Another method I use a lot for breakdown printing is using narrow strips of masking tape to create a wonky barcode on the screen. I then use a roller to spread thickened dye on top before leaving it to dry. Once dry I pull off the strips of masking tape and print through with paste. I love the way the lines breakdown and the colours blend as I continue to pull through!

After a couple of months of composition, contruction and stitch I am back at my print bench doing what I love best - breakdown printing! I'm not trying to make a glorious piece of wholecloth. I'm printing fabrics which are going to be cut into smallish pieces before being reassembled. So there is no agonising over where to place my screen. No worrying that I've ruined the piece by laying down one too many prints. Just joyous, carefree application of colour, shape and texture to cloth. Accompanied by loud music and to be followed up by a glass of wine. Call me sad but life does not get much better then this!

I was going to update the website over the New Year holiday. Then it became over the Chinese New Year holiday .... so it is a good job that I didn't make this a New Year Resolution! At last though, it is done. I've updated the 'About' page and added pricing to many of the pieces shown. I'd like to add 'buy now / paypal' buttons to each page but haven't figured how to do that yet. I've also added a new page on my Storm / Still series. But the biggest change is the removal of the page on hand dyed fabrics with the link to my Etsy site. I've sold very little fabric since setting up the site - in fact I suspect I have paid more in listing fees than I made in sales - so I have decided to close the shop and focus on making art!

Hope you like the changes and please feel free to point out any typos!

After several months of working on my Still / Storm series I am taking a break and focussing back on my Ruins series. But before I do here is a small preview of Storm 1 (Jagged) which I will be submitting to the SAQA Turmoil call for entry. I'll dedicate this one to Linda Bilsborrow who had requested a 'spikey' one - hope you like it Linda!

The first thing I need to do with my Ruins series is print more fabric. I love this series because nearly all the fabrics are created using breakdown printing. The photo below shows the screen I set up yesterday. The metal plates have been used so many times that some have become rusty. The rust actually prints off leaving unintended flashes of rust orange on the fabric. Lovely! They also leave bits of rust on the screen but that is a small price to pay.

A very short post to share our second son, Callum's revamped website. Cal runs a picture framing business, Manchester Custom Framing based in Islington Mill in Salford. He has framed lots of textile art including making a beautiful walnut frame for a set of three rust dyed and stitched pieces for me. He does a great job and offers discounted rates to artists. So if you need something framing .....

We are currently turning an old, spare bedroom into a super hero pad for our grandson. Or rather my son is decorating; I am just driving to and from B&Q and paying. Unfortunately the bedroom wasn't really spare - it was full of stuff, lots and lots of stuff. Including lots of my 'quilt / art' stuff that I hadn't looked at, let alone used, in years. And a large pile of finished quilts. My son, very helpfully, carried everything out to the studio. Oh boy do I have a lot of 'stuff'! There was some stuff that was easy to throw out. A big box of painted papers (mostly created during a couple of City and Guilds courses). Two boxes with scraps of commercial fabrics left over from long forgotten projects. Some tapestries and cross stitches that I did 25 - 30 years ago that have sat in a box ever since. There was some stuff that absolutely had to be kept. A letter press and 4 boxes of type (left behind when our daughter left home), lots of books, some unfinished projects that I will complete at some stage (assuming I live to 110!) and many of the quilts. But not all of them. I should probably throw away more but can only bring myself to get rid of 3. One was a Hoffmann Challenge piece (do they still exist?), one was hideous when I made it and still is, and one from the above mentioned C&G course. It feels a bit strange but quite liberating. Have I crossed a Rubicon?

In honour of this momentus occasion I thought I would share a couple of my older pieces. The first is the last 'tradional' quilt I made. At the time I was a still a member of a local quilt group and the piece was a result of one of their workshops. I called it Slapdash because my points don't all match (sorry quilt police!). I only actually finished this in 2012 - it felt important to finish it, a like closing a door on a previous life. It is just over a metre square and I'm looking for a loving home for it.

The second piece is called London, England and was completed for a Quilters Guild challenge at Festival of Quilts in 2010. I made this after finishing my City and Guilds Diploma. I had spent nearly four years immersed in Gothic Cathedrals as a design source and needed some light relief. So I made this without using a sketchbook or creating samples. Do you like the very professional photography! I'm not only going to keep this, I'm going to hang it in my grandsons new bedroom - I think Thor and The Hulk would appreciate giant ice creams!