Breakdown printing is seriously addictive. When the sun is shining and screens are drying in a couple of hours it is really tempting to just keep on printing.

Especially when it is giving me such yummy results. But I've been here before and know that it is important to stop and take a moment. So today I have put all my newly printed fabrics through the washing machine (twice), dried them, ironed them and assessed them.

The piece of art that exists in my head will be mostly monochromatic and will be pale at the top and dark at the bottom. So I have cut into my fabrics and pinned the 'good' pieces on my design wall. Standing back I can see that I have lots of light and medium pieces but none that are really dark. I can also see that the inclusion of words is interesting but I only I have a couple of small pieces so far.

Not all pieces made the grade yet so I have a pile that I will soda soak again and print over either to include words or to make much darker or both. Although breakdown printing is not an 'exact' process it does become more predictable the more you do so hopefully the next round of printing will give me palette of fabrics I need to move on to the composition time. Lets hope the good weather lasts!

I'm in the final stages of making Ruins 7. Well I think I am. I need to stitch on facings and get it hung up somewhere so I can decide if it needs more stitch or not. Which presents a bit of a challenge as it is taller than the height of my studio. This will take a few days to sort out. So what should I do now? I have been planning on going back to my Storm / Still series to (try to) make a piece for the SAQA call for entry 'Layered Voices'. Up until now my ideas were all pretty vague and somewhat grandiose. But today I had a light bulb moment thanks to fellow Etcetera member Linda Bilsborrow. Following a discussion about her work I happened to glance at a small sample that was pinned to my Storm / Still design wall .... and flash! Off went that elusive light bulb!

I'm really lucky to have several design walls so I can keep lots of ideas and samples pinned up. Most of that space has been filled with Ruins stuff for the last few months but I kept some photos of Dunure beach and stitched samples visible - would I have had that light bulb moment if everything was tucked away?

And now that I have a good idea of how to procede I have rearranged my design walls to keep me focussed. On one wall I have pinned the sample and some fabrics that I have already printed. I will add to this wall as I print more pieces. On another wall I have pinned up more photos of Dunure - I can look at these and remember what I felt sat on that beach and what I'm trying to convey in my work. And I have changed the drop cloth on my big print bench from the unmarked one that signifies I am in a composition and stitching phase to one with lots of lovely residual marks from previous printing sessions. Not as quick as flipping a switch but it has the same effect!

I finished this piece several weeks ago but have only just hung and photographed it. It is quite different to the earlier pieces in the Ruins series and I am not yet sure whether that is different in a good way. For better or for worse the quilt is now on its way to Festival of Quilts where it will be shown in the Art Quilt section. Because it is so wide I am hoping it will get hung on a white wall rather than on the traditional quilt stands. I think some of the impact will be lost if the lighting isn't great but that is a risk I am willing to take to get my work out there! Wherever there is!

A word of warning before I start - those you know me might want to sit down.

I have now finished the background stitching on Ruins 7. It is big; a massive 5 square metres. Which equates to hundreds of parallel lines of stitching achieved by spending hours and hours at my sewing machine. And it looks great - well worth the investment I have made in it so far.

I wanted to do something a little different with this piece and had, in my mind, stitched silhouettes of ruined, bombed out buildings. I went on-line to get some images to work from. Sadly there are far too many images out there - from London and Dresden in the second World War to Aleppo today. I started by sketching in a notebook but could get no sense of scale. So I decided to draw out the full sized design. Cue lots of hours drawing, tearing up paper and drawing again until I was sort of happy. I draw onto blank newsprint paper as I know it tears easily and thought I could pin it to the quilt and stitch through.

I thought wrong. Trying to manhandle the quilt and paper on my sewing machine was horrendous. If I had a swear box in the studio I could have paid my mortgage off!! I thought long and hard about my options …. And decided to draw the design directly onto the quilt. And not with a pencil (which wouldn't really show up) or with a water soluble marker pen (as I have no intention of letting the piece near water). I decided to use a black permanent marker pen. Yeaks!!

I am using free machine quilting in a black thread to 'etch' over the lines so most of the marks should be hidden. Assuming I don't make a mistake …… Is that brave or really stupid?

I love creating Art. I love the dyeing and printing of fabrics. I love the cutting and composing. I love the layering and stitching. I even love adding the bindings, labels and hanging sleeves. But Art is not Art in my mind unless it is seen by others. And that means spending time on administration and on self-promotion.

On activities like writing this blog post.

On refreshing my website - I have updated the About section and added new images to the Hidden Message and Storm / Still pages. I've also updated the 'Latest Works' image with one of my minitature quilt 'Vestiges'.

On getting together with other Etcetera members to finish preparations for our next exhibition at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery - the exhibition runs from Saturday 10th September to Saturday 15th October. Yesterday we used a scale model to work out the layout of the exhibition. We discussed critical details of the Preview Evening (Friday 9th September from 7pm to 9pm) such as how to distribute invitations, how much wine to buy, whether we should have music etc.

On researching potential opportunities to exhibit, on keeping my database of completed works up to date, on monitoring my progress on projects against key deadlines, on answering emails etc etc.

In fact all of the types of activities you would work on if you ran a small business because that is what being an exhibiting artist is.

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!