It's raining. Again.

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post and there has been little to smile about. As a 'remainer' I watched the referendum results come in with increasing disbelief. And as the fall out continues it feels like the country is rudderless. And then there was the football. The awful weather seems strangely fitting.

All that said life carries on. The Ruins background I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is now pieced and layered. It is approximately 180cm wide by 250cm high so I have kept it in two halves to make it easier to get through the sewing machine. I've been quilting hundreds of parallel lines. It will take about 35 hours to finish this background quilting. This process gives me plenty of thinking time so I know what 'structures' will be stitched onto the background. The only problem left to solve is how I will photograph it. The studio walls are only 230cm high so one option is to hang it from one long edge then turn the photos by 90 degrees. Another option is to rig something up outside. Maybe the sun will start shining soon?

Cultivate a selection of beautiful breakdown printed fabrics in choosen colour family of rust and half-strength black with some added petrol green.

Cut into pieces each 2.5 x 6.5inches. Keep all scraps just because they are too nice to throw away (and I may want to make some more miniature pieces!)

Select and clear my biggest design wall. Put the football on the radio (optional).

And randomly add fabric pieces to the design wall. OK so not completely randomly. I want this piece to be approximately 70 inches wide by 100 inches high being pale at the top and dark at the bottom. The design wall is not big enough so I will have to do this in two halves. I select pieces semi-randomly from the piles then just put them up on the design wall going from left to right, row after row. Every 4 or 5 rows I stop and rearrange anything that looks really out of place but I try not to do too much of this. Carry on until design wall is covered.

Tweak a little then leave to 'marinate' overnight. I always make sure that I look at the composition in both daylight and under artificial light before I start stitching.

Unfortunately the design wall had it's own opinion of the composition and shed lots of pieces overnight. Darn!! (Probably my own fault as I had to slightly overlap the pieces so that I could fit 12 on each row).  Or maybe this is just another way to randomise the position of the pieces? Look on the bright side Leah.

This is the other miniature I completed this week. I added the uprights before stitching the horizontal lines. I'm not sure it 100% works on a piece this small (30cm x 30cm) but I like it enough to give it a name! Just need to add the facings and a label. My original attempt didn't work for me so won't get a name or be finished. That said I have pinned it up on one of my design walls so that I can keep thinking about what would make it work.

A few weeks before going on holiday I was told that my day job (as a Global Design and Development Manager) was no longer sustainable ... a fancy way of saying that I was being made redundant. Which kind of sucks but, having sat on the other side of the table in the past, I quickly moved past being angry and upset to being pragmatic albeit still rather sad. The paperwork was completed the day before we travelled to Dunure so I had lots of time to start looking forward as I sat on the beach looking across to Arran. Those glorious sunsets being symbolic of one part of my life ending and another one starting ...

But as part of moving forward there has been a lot to sort out - a car (I am going to really, really miss my company car!), a mobile phone (thank goodness that I have kids to help sort this one out!), broadband (just don't ask! total nightmare!) and of course money stuff. I feel like I have spent the whole week either filling out forms or being put on hold on the phone. Despite being officially unemployed I have only managed about 10 hours in the studio. But those few hours have produced a miniature quilt that I am happy to show at Festival of Quilts. I decided I didn't like my first attempt so I started again and actually made two more pieces. Below is the piece I like. It is called Vestiges.

I wish that I could take this opportunity to become a full time studio artist. Alas we still have a hefty mortgage so I will be spending the next few months looking for a new job. Happily my redundancy pay will keep the wolf from the door for a while so I can take my time. Which means that, now I have sorted out most of the 'stuff' that needed doing quickly, I can put in more hours in the studio. Or I could just sit in the garden drinking good coffee and enjoying the summer!

Today is our last full day in Dunure. The weather is still glorious but I was beginning to feel a little miserable at the thought of leaving the cottage, and the beach, and the views and the pub ... Until I opened my email and read that Ruins 5 has been shortlisted into Fine Art Quilt Masters! Serious happy dance going on! Time for an early gin and tonic made with Rock Rose hand crafted Scottish gin.

The weather here in Dunure continues to be glorious - if this proves to be the best couple of weeks weather this summer then I can't think of a better place to spend them! But you can only sit in the sun reading books and eating ice cream for so long ....

My fourth handmade book is bound using Coptic stitch. The front and back covers are stitched to the paper signatures leaving the spine of the book exposed.

I realised last week that I didn't actually have the tools I needed to do a good job on this book. But thanks to internet shopping I was able to buy coloured linen thread, eyelets and a wonderful new tool - a Japanese screw punch. I could have just used an awl to make holes in the front and back covers but that would not have looked as nice as using eyelets. Bookbinding may 'just' be a 'hobby' for me but if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well!!

The weather in Dunure has been glorious. So much so that I got a little sunburnt on Monday - pink is definitely not my favourite colour! But every cloud has a silver lining and in this case it meant staying indoors for some of yesterday making books. As hobbies go this is seriously addictive!

My second book was constructed in the same way as the first but I used cotton rag paper for the pages and a bookbinders waxed linen thread for the stitching. I'm much happier with this one - the paper fills the book a bit more and the thread looks more 'substantial' on the spine.

My third book is A4 rather than A5 and I added some detail to the front cover. Because I had converted my hand dyed fabrics to book cloth I was able to glue the layers in place and did not need to worry about them fraying. The longer spine meant that I could be a little more creative with the stitching. I used the linen thread again and introduced a variant on some of the long stitches. Working on a larger book was a bit awkward at times (could have done with a third hand) but the results are worth it!

We've just started a two week holiday in my favourite place - Dunure. It was grey and raining off and on yesterday but today we work to sunshine, blue skies and crystal clear water. I started my day with a cup of coffee sat on the beach - perfect!

I'm giving my hard working sewing machine a holiday as well (otherwise known as being serviced!) so I've brought my bookbinding stuff with me. I had a lovely weekend making bookcloth and making my first book cover in April. Today I have finished my first book. I have used long stitch to sew in the signatures (folded paper pages to you and me!).  I didn't overload the book with pages as I figured I needed wriggle room for my first attempt at stitching. I used a thick 12wgt yellow thread but I think a thicker thread might have looked better. I'm pretty happy with the result!

I realised last night that I hadn't blogged for about 10 days despite promising myself that I would blog at least once a week. I told myself that I had a good excuse - the day job has been a little distracting but I have still managed to get about 13 hours a week in the studio. So why haven't I blogged? Maybe because it is not a fully formed, hard to break habit yet? The answer, for me at least, is to keep going, just in the same way that I keep going into my studio to work even when I'm tired or distracted. I turn up and do the work! So what have I done in the last 10 days. Well the good weather lasted longer than expected so I have about 12 square metres of gorgeous fabric to cut into 'bricks' ready to build more Ruins pieces.

And I worked on a miniature piece that, if I like it once finished, will be entered into the miniatures category at Festival of Quilts this summer. Stitching a piece that is only 30cm square is so much easier than working on my recent, mammoth, Ruins pieces!