I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year. Like many of you ours was a quiet one with just our household. No noisy family parties or more civilised meals out this year which will make them all the more enjoyable when we are able to meet again. But there was laughter, family games nights, too much food and drink and heated debates over what films to watch just like there is every year.

It is the time of year when we tend to look back on what we did in the past year and think about what we would like to achieve in the coming year. 2020 was a horrible year, tragic for too many people, and it is tempting to write it off. But I think it is worth remembering the positives. Here are mine.

• My family are well. Our son Joe has been a star, doing most of the ‘outside’ stuff like shopping so us oldies could stay safe.

• My students have been so understanding and supportive. It has been horrible having to reschedule or cancel workshops as we have moved through different levels of restrictions. I am grateful for their stoicism and their kind words. And I am grateful for the company of the few students that did make it into the studio this year. Those few teaching days in the summer and early autumn were wonderful and I could have hugged you all if I had been allowed!

• My customers. To counter the loss of income from teaching I increased the range of products on my webshop in April to include hand printed fabrics, thermofax screens, dyes etc and my customers responded with amazing generosity. I am pretty sure that some of you didn’t really need that extra pack of fabric but thank you!

• Raising money for The Trussell Trust. Through the sale of limited edition bookmarks, £1 donation from each pre-order sale of my new book and sales of second hand textile books in the studio we have raised £692.50 since the start of the pandemic. This money will help support food banks across the UK. I don’t know if you have felt the same but there have been times this year when I have felt so useless. Sat at home whilst medics, carers and other key workers have done so much. The money we have raised together is a drop in the ocean but it is something.

• Writing a book. I wasn’t planning to write my second book, Colour Your Palette, this year but I needed something positive to focus on, to fill my days and, frankly, to bolster my bank account. It was incredibly hard to begin with as I was so worried and anxious about the spread of Covid-19 but I kept at it. And I am rather proud of myself and the book. Thank you to everyone that has brought it!

• And on a lighter note …. I had my annual health check a few weeks ago and was congratulated by the nurse for only putting on 3kg during lockdown. Apparently that shows remarkable restraint. She was a little less happy about the increase in alcohol intake but we can’t all be perfect!

It looks like we are in for a very difficult few months in the UK but 2021 will be better than 2020. We have vaccines which, hopefully, means that we will be able to meet again soon. And we will be able to hug!

Leah x

Last time I wrote about my sense of disconnection from my art and I’d like to thank everyone who got in touch. Your support, and knowing that many of you share my sense of disconnection, really helps. This pandemic has turned our worlds upside down in so many ways but I cannot blame my lack of connection to my art on the pandemic alone. As I wrote before there were fissures already there, I think, from the changes in my life over recent years.

So how do I reconnect? There are lots of things I could try. I could take a workshop and learn a new technique in the hope that it sparks something. I could pick a call for entry with a set theme and a deadline and force myself to work on it just to be doing something, again in the hope it sparks something. Or I could start some form of daily practice, maybe something that is outside my ‘comfort zone’ such as sketching. These methods work really well for some people but I know myself and I know that these ideas won’t work for me. I’ve worked into sketchbooks and worked to other peoples themes often enough to recognise that they are not for me.

Instead I have spent time looking back and thinking about what has worked really well for me in the past. I don’t want to reinvent myself. I am not questioning the processes I have used in the past. I am looking for new inspiration that is a better fit with my life today. I know from experience that I do not make good art if I have a great idea and start working on it straightaway. The two quilts I made in April are a good example of this. I also know that my ideas rattle around in my head and evolve best when I’m busy printing and stitching - I really don’t do sitting around waiting for the muse!

Which is a bit of a conundrum. So I have stopped thinking about finding new inspiration. Instead I am trusting my process and trying to create abstract pieces that I can fall in love with. Some may say that this is taking the easy option but honestly now is not the right time for me to work on pieces with deep meaning. I am being kind to myself. I have picked a colour family to work with that is rather lovely. I have used breakdown printing to create a palette of fabrics. I am using simple compositions, based on different width strips and simple shapes, to create a series of full sized quilts. And I’m spending many, many hours sat at my machine stitching.

Some of the fabrics I have printed so far haven’t worked and some of the compositions I’ve played with haven’t made it off my design wall. Over the last few weeks I have finished one quilt that is boring and have stopped working on another piece part way through quilting. But I am slowly working towards pieces that are interesting. I haven’t got to the ‘wow’ moment but I will keep going. I don’t know where I will end up. I may end up with a successful series of abstract pieces. Or I may start thinking about a new source of inspiration that eventually leads to new work and end up throwing these pieces away. I feel that the process I am going through needs to be a private one so I’m not going to share images until I know which way this is going. Some of you may shudder at the idea of quilts going in the bin but I see this as an investment in me. A necessary investment. And a positive focus at the end of a very difficult year.

May I take a moment to wish each of you a peaceful Christmas in which you can find moments of happiness.

All my love, Leah

To say 2020 hasn’t gone as planned would be a bit of an understatement. At the beginning of this year my focus was on making art and on teaching. I had intentionally delayed plans to grow my online shop and to write my second book as I wanted to slow down a bit after a hectic 2019 and spend more time with my family.

But in March everything changed. With no income from teaching I quickly switched gears and spent time developing my online shop. Like many people I really struggled to focus on anything but found comfort in printing fabric to sell.

As my focus returned I decided to take a few weeks ‘off’ to make art. The pieces that I had been working on before March felt completely irrelevant. I had zero desire to work on that series so, like many other artists, I decided to use my response to the corona virus as my inspiration. I followed my usual creative process - I chose my colours first then printed fabric before thinking about composition. Whilst I enjoyed the process the two quilts I created were a bit disappointing. In fact one of them is just plain ugly. Under normal times I would have thrown those in the bin and kept going. I felt frustrated but didn’t have the emotional strength to figure out why they weren’t ‘right’.

Instead I threw myself into writing my second book. I took breaks to teach when restrictions allowed but I can honestly say that I stopped thinking about making art. I did enter a quilt I had made at the beginning of the year into several juried exhibitions but it was rejected over and over again. Normally this would really upset me but it didn’t. I like the quilt and would happily hang it on a wall in my home but just don’t feel as connected to it as I do my earlier work.

Eventually the book was finished. Having seriously over worked myself I was forced to really slow down for a few weeks. My mind turned to making art. And I realised that I have lost my way. I have lost the sense of connection with my work and I have lost the habit of making art. My life has changed completely in recent years. I no longer work in industry, based in an old cotton mill, surrounded by heavy machinery. I work in my studio. I no longer travel around the world with my job. Even before the pandemic I barely travelled anywhere and now I spend 99% of my time inside the boundaries of our property. I no longer have a clean separation between my art and my day job. My art is, or at least should be, part of my day job.

When I changed career and started teaching it was so that I could combine being an artist, cope with the increasing care responsibilities I have and still pay the bills. I was adamant that I wanted to be an artist who taught rather than a teacher who makes the odd bit of art. It was inevitable that there would be periods when my focus was 100% on growing my teaching practice and writing books but I failed to recognise that the connection I felt to my art was in part driven by the fact that previously I worked on my art everyday not in chunks of a week here and a week there.

Local restrictions currently prevent me teaching and I fear that this will continue into the new year. I could spend this time starting my next book, creating more thermofax designs for my shop, or developing online workshops but I’m not. I’m spending the time looking inwards, trying to reconnect with my art and figuring out how I sustain this once I am able to teach.

I will write about this in more detail next time but I will share something I have done that is helping me. It is a little thing but I have, temporarily, removed the big plastic ‘Covid safe’ screens from the studio and have rearranged the tables. Whilst those screens are necessary they just make me want to cry. By removing them I feel like I am reclaiming my creative space. A little step towards reconnecting.

I am very pleased to announce that Christine Chester will be teaching her five day Poetry of Stitch workshop here at Urban Studio North next September. Christine is a talented artist, popular teacher and runs her own studio in Eastbourne.

Stitching, whether by hand or machine, is usually the final layer on a piece of work and often the process we enjoy the most. But we can get into a routine of using the stitches with which we are most familiar. In this workshop Christine will encourage you to look at ways of stitching that will extend your language of marks. She will look at both hand and machine stitching thinking about the character and the weight of the stitching that we are using and how to apply that to printed work so that the stitch either enhances the printed layer; or creates focus within the print. There will be an emphasis on trying lots of small sample pieces before starting to work on a larger, more considered piece of work.

The five day workshop costs £450 and requires students to bring their own sewing machine. If you want to learn more about Poetry of Stitch please click here.

This is the final announcement about workshops in 2021 - the studio calendar is pretty full and I have all my fingers and toes crossed that we can run without restrictions, hopefully from March onwards. Normally I would now be thinking about workshops in 2022 but, given all the uncertainty in our lives, I’m not planning on making any announcements until Easter.

Before I go …..tis the season of shameless marketing ….. did you know that you can buy Urban Studio North gift cards in my online shop? Available in £20, £50 and £100 values, these digital gift cards can be used on all of the products in my shop including workshops, books, dyes etc and never expire! So if your loved ones don’t know what to get you for Christmas why not suggest a gift card?

Thank you for reading, Leah x

Whilst it is likely that there will be restrictions on my ability to open the studio early in the New Year I am very hopeful that life will get back to something near normal in the spring. The news about vaccines over recent days has felt like a glimmer of sunshine in what is a dark winter for many people around the world.

Looking ahead I am very pleased to tell you that I have developed a five day workshop Colour Your Palette based on my new book. In the workshop we will consider the differences between paints and dyes and what that means as we translate colour theory into colour practice when using dyes to add colour to cloth. We will look at the six types of colour references in the book and students will make a start on creating their own sets. We will explore various tools, including colour families, for creating different types of colour schemes. We will use those tools to work through multiple sources of inspiration, extracting individual colours and, if appropriate, blending those colours to create coherent collections, or palettes, of colour. And we will learn how to translate our colour choices into working practices, controlling colour within the confines of the surface design technique we prefer to use.

The workshop is aimed at those who already know how to dye or print fabric but want better control over colour in their work. The cost for the five days is £425 but this also includes ten squeezy bottles and an acrylic mixing plate so that students can continue their studies at home. The workshop will run four times next year on 12-16 April, 5-9 July, 13-17 September and 18-22 October. You can find out more here.

I have also added two new dates for my Breakdown Your Palette five day workshop. The new dates are 9th to 13th August 2021 and 23rd to 27th August 2021. Many of my 2020 Breakdown students moved their bookings to the 2021 workshops when I had to cancel the workshops this year so I will be teaching this workshop a lot next year. Which is wonderful as breakdown printing is my favourite thing! The workshops cost £400 and you can find out more here.

And finally, whilst I was loading these new workshops onto my website I noticed that the images of some of my Wonky Print Inspiration Packs in my shop were all the same. No idea how that happened but I have, hopefully, reset the images correctly.

Bye for now, Leah x

If you follow me on Facebook you might have already seen that the copies of my new book arrived safely, albeit a day later than expected. 55 boxes of books stacked on a pallet! To say that my heart was in my mouth when I opened the first box would be an understatement. My proof copies were printed using a digital printer whereas the main print run was offset / litho printed and there is always the risk of colour shift between the two. I’m delighted to say that the colours were all OK and the book looks fabulous! Which made me very happy (and a little tearful)!

Son, Joe was somewhat less happy as he had to carry most of the boxes down into our cellar!

But it has all been worth it. I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who ordered Colour Your Palette, and to everyone who ordered other items from my webshop. Your support means the world to me and my family! Over the last three days Joe and I have packed and shipped 154 parcels with Joe doing most of the runs to the post office. He is a star!

You may remember that I promised to donate £1 to The Trussell Trust for every book pre-ordered between the 1st and 10th November. I am delighted to let you know that 151 books were pre-ordered and that, along with sales of charity bookmarks, I was able to send £206 to them this morning. With gift aid we have donated £673.75 since the lockdown in March. Like many other textile teachers around the world my income has been significantly affected by the pandemic. But I’m lucky - if things got really bad we have property and pension pots as a safety net. The Trussell Trust provides food banks for those, often young families, who aren’t so lucky. It is going to be a long, hard winter for so many and I’m grateful for your help in supporting them.

Thank you x

Thank you to everyone who has been placing orders for my new book and other ‘stuff’ via my website. The response to Colour Your Palette has been rather overwhelming and very much appreciated. The books are ‘in production’ and due to be delivered to me on Tuesday (10th). I aim, with the help of son Joe, to get everything shipped within 3 days. Which has meant getting organised.

I do like getting organised so this has been a real treat! I have set up piles of ‘book only’ orders by destination and postage type. And I have been putting together the orders for those of you who have ordered fabric, dyes etc along with your book. These are also organised by destination and postage type. I’ve ordered and received the packaging that will be needed. And Joe has created storage space for the 50+ boxes of books that will arrive on Tuesday.

We have worked out a system for checking books and packing them. I’m in charge of shipping labels and order confirmations. Joe is in charge of taking parcels to the post office. Call me weird but I love stuff like this! (I suspect Joe might not love it quite as much as he is doing all the heavy lifting!).

And whilst I wait for Tuesday I’ve been taking time out to ‘recharge my batteries’. After shipping out all the books I want to get back to ‘making’. I’ve done plenty of printing, dyeing and playing for the book but it is 6 months since I worked on my art. Six months since I sat at my sewing machine. Far too long!

Stay well,

Leah x

Colour swatches on a piece of silk linen fabric

First of all, a great big thank you to all of you who placed orders for my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ yesterday!

I spent the morning emailing students to cancel all my November workshops due to the UK lockdown that starts on Thursday. My lovely students were all great and most have just moved their bookings to next year but I still felt incredibly sad as I look forward to having students in the studio so much. Seeing the orders come through for the book made the day easier. (As well as providing a much needed income!)

In this post I’m going to share a few pages from the book starting with the contents page. There is a lot in my book. I start by looking at traditional colour theory and colour practice when using dyes. I then take the reader through the creation of a series of colour references that not only illustrate the reality of working with dyes but also create a catalogue of hundreds of swatches of different colours each with the exact recipe needed to reproduce them.

Page 3 - Contents

Page 14 - Hue - one of the fundamental properties of colour

Page 41 - Scraping swatches of colour onto fabric

Page 45 - Adding more swatches

Page 63 - Looking at our colour references and what they tell us about our base colours

After step-by-step guides to creating colour references I include a section on how we might use them - to match individual colours, to create a range of colours based on one hue in a range of values (monochromatic), to create a range of colours in a similar value that are analogous and to create a range of colours that differ in both hue and value (colour families). Again, lots of step-by-step instructions and photos.

Page 109 - Matching individual colours

Page 125 - Different ways of mixing colour families

I then change tack and go back to colour theory, looking at traditional colour schemes and how our artistic styles might affect the types of palettes of colour that we develop for our work. I was honoured to be allowed to share examples from some great artists in this section - Charloote Ziebarth, Christine Seager, Diane Melms, Julie Bunter, Leslie Morgan and Uta Lenk - thank you! And, through a series of colour studies, I looked at how we might work with different types of sources of inspiration for colour.

Page 144 - Types of colour scheme

Page 148 - Colour study based on photos of the beach at Dunure, Scotland

And finally, well nearly finally, I include a section giving instructions for some of the techniques I used to make the samples in the book. These are ‘tried and tested’ techniques that I’ve been using for years. There are a myriad of different ways to add colour to textile and some excellent books already out there. My book is more about the understanding and control of colour when using any one of those techniques.

Page 164 - Dyeing small pieces of fabric in a plastic bag (you can do this in containers if you don’t want to use bags!)

Page 176 - Simple screen printing technique using shredded paper on the fabric as a resist

Page 184 - Yes, I include a short section on breakdown printing!

And finally, I have included an extensive Appendix which is chock full of information about the science of colour, the dyes and other chemicals we use etc.

I recognise that the structure and content of my book is a little different. But in it, I share the sum of my knowledge to date with the hope that it inspires you to delve deeper into colour.

Stay well,

Leah x

You can now pre-order my new book ‘Colour Your Palette’ via my on line shop. The book costs £25 (+ postage) and I expect to start shipping globally from the 10th November.

Colour Your Palette is a practical guide to understanding and using colour when specifically working with Procion MX dyes. But the principle behind the book, and the exercises it contains, could equally apply to other dye types. I have attempted to translate traditional colour theory, based on paints and paint pigments, into colour practice when using dyes. Because dyes do not behave like paints. Dyes are not a surface application where the colour is ‘stuck’ to the surface like paint on paper. Dyes penetrate right into our fabrics, our yarns, our fibres, and our threads reacting with them chemically at a molecular level. They don’t make our fabric stuff and they don’t fade when washed. Dyes are translucent - we can print or dye our textiles multiple times adding layers of texture and shape. But they do come with some limitations that mean the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using paint are not the same as the ‘rules’ for mixing colours when using dyes.

Colour Your Palette is a ‘big’ book at 216 pages but my aim, in writing it, was to provide a guide that helps you achieve the results that you want time and time again. A guide that gives you all the information you need to create colours that make your heart sing!

To coincide with the launch of my new book I have added a selection of new products to my website. In addition to all the dyes and other chemicals I am now selling three sizes of screen (for screen printing), wide necked squeezy bottles (for storing thickened dyes) and acrylic mixing plates (for mixing small quantities of thickened dyes, mono-printing and so much more). And I have put together a range of Starter Packs with a 15% discount on the cost of the individual items. I’ll talk about these more in the coming days.

I have also added some new Wonky Print Inspiration Packs of my own printed and dyed fabrics.

And, just to remind you, I will be donating £1 for every copy of Colour Your Palette sold between the 1st and 10th November to The Trussell Trust, supporting food banks throughout the UK.

Thank you, and stay well, Leah x

PS. I have scheduled this post, and all the new products, to become public at one minute past midnight on the 1st …… or at least I think I have!