In my last post I told you about the things that I’m doing to raise some money for The Trussell Trust, a charity that supports food banks in the UK and campaigns to end food poverty. Having recovered from The Creative Craft Show at ExCel last weekend I’ve spent some time updating my online shop. So …..

• I have now added the Charity Inspiration Packs that I have left to my online shop. Each pack contains a mix of silk, linen, cotton and viscose fabrics and threads. Each pack costs £12.50 and I will donate £5 from each sale to The Trussell Trust. You can find them here. I’ve also added some more Wonky Print Inspiration Packs.

• I have added new dates for a Breakdown Your Palette workshop (12th to 16th September) and a Simply Screen Printing workshop (16th and 17th July) as the other workshops had sold out. You can find out more about all my workshops here. And, as a reminder, I am donating £10 from every workshop place I sell between now and the end of April to The Trussell Trust.

• I have reduced the cost of my online Breakdown Your Palette workshop by 25% from £240 to £180 until the end of April in recognition of the fact that not everyone is free to travel yet. And in recognition that attending a workshop in my studio is not cheap and not accessible to all.

I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by my stand at the show last weekend, it was a real pleasure to be able to exhibit Ruins 7 and I’m humbled by the response it received. Ruins 7 was made in response to the Russian devastation of Aleppo in Syria. Let’s hope the world learns some lessons this time round.

Thank you for your continued support, Leah x

Ruins 7

Although the last posting date is later I’m setting Wednesday 15th December as a cut off for pre-Christmas orders as I plan on taking a long break over Christmas and the New Year. Orders placed later than this will be posted at the start of January. (Unless I get a bit bored and fancy a trip to the Post Office!). I thought you might also like to know that I’ve added a few more new Wonky Print Inspiration Packs to my online shop.

I have now finished teaching for this year. The bad weather this week meant postponing the last two days teaching but other than that I’m happy, and relieved, to have been able to teach so many workshops this year. Despite the worries about the new variant we are much better place compared to this time last year. The rollout of vaccines has been amazing but I’m very grateful for the great attitude of all my students this year. We’ve worn masks, washed and sanitised hands, taken lateral flow tests and made sure that the studio has been a safe environment for all of us. Thank you to each and every one of year!

With no teaching scheduled until the end of January I can now turn all of my attention to making art. I’ve removed the plastic screens and re-arranged the benches to make the studio feel more ‘mine’. I’ve pinned all my ‘work in progress’ up on the design wall. And hidden the stock of chocolate biscuits so my beloved family can’t help themselves. Chocolate, and lots of strong coffee are an essential part of my creative process! The next quilt in the Cadence series is ready to quilt and I’ve got a completely new series in the development stage. So plenty to keep me busy!

Leah x

It is that time of year when you may be looking for Christmas presents for others, or dropping big hints about things you would like yourself. So, always being happy to help, I have added some new products to my online shop that you might like.

I’ve put together some new Wonky Print Packs and some packs of hand dyed fabric. The fabrics are all ones that I’ve made whilst teaching or when demonstrating breakdown printing at Festival of Quilts in the summer. Each pack contains approx. 1 metre of fabric and includes some ‘nearly solid’ colours that co-ordinated with the printed fabrics.

I’ve also added some new Thermofax Screen designs. Most are designs that I’ve used in my older art quilts and that my students have really liked to use in the studio. Deco 1 (below) is a completely new design that I’m rather pleased with.

Together we have raised £336 this year for the charity YoungMinds. I’d really like to add to that total so I have had some beautiful ceramic mugs made that feature my quilt Cadence 7. Each mug costs £12 including a £2 donation to YoungMinds. I hope you like them.

Although I spend a lot of my time printing I also teach my students lots of ways to dye their fabrics. I’ve put together a Beginners Hand Dyeing Kit in two colourways. Each kit contains three 50g pots of dye, soda ash, urea, a graduated measuring pot and a detailed instruction booklet that covers bag dyeing, dyeing a colour wheel, gradation dyeing, layered dyeing, tray dyeing and high immersion bucket dyeing. The Spring kit contains Acid Lemon, Magenta and Turquoise dyes and the Autumn kit contains Golden Yellow, Scarlet and Royal Blue dyes. The kits contain enough dyes etc to dye over eight metres of fabric and (I think) are a good place to start if you have never done any dyeing with Procion MX dyes.

And finally, if your loved ones are worried that they might buy you the wrong thing how about suggesting one of my Gift Cards (available in £20, £50 and £100 units).

And that is the blatant plugging over for now ….. I might add a few more Wonky Print Packs when I’ve caught up with my backlog of rinsing, washing and ironing my printed fabrics!

I’m busy packing boxes and printing signs ready for Festival of Quilts which opens on Thursday at the NEC, Birmingham. I’ll be on stand QIA - the Cadence quilt above will be on the stand along with Ruins 8:Kilns so I should be easy to spot.

As I said before I am limited in what products I can sell on my stand so am offering an order now, collect at the show option on orders over £20. Just type in the discount code FOQ2021 at checkout and no postage will be added to the order. The deadline for this service is Monday (tomorrow) at 10am so that I have time to get orders ready.

I will also be taking orders at the show for a selection of products from my online shop including dyes and screens for delivery to your home address free of charge after the show. Unfortunately this offer will only apply to UK addresses and again the minimum order will be £20. Postage outside the UK is just too expensive to extend this offer outside the UK.

On my stand I will have my books and my hand dyed and printed fabrics for sale. And, of course, you’ll be able to sign up for workshops in my studio in 2021 and 2022. I’m also giving a Quick & Easy workshop at 1pm on the Saturday called Hand Printed by Me! And I’ll be demonstrating breakdown printing on my stand. I am really looking forward to connecting to people again. Hope to see some of you there!

Yes, I have figured out how to do it!

Although I will have my fabrics and books at Festival I’m not able to sell things like individual dyes, screens or textile inks on my Quilt in Action stand. However I can offer a buy now, collect at Festival service. Which means you can avoid paying for shipping. This is applicable on all orders over £20 and is available from today until 10am on Monday 26th July. Just type in the discount code FOQ2021 at checkout to activate. Click here for my online shop.

You will be able to collect your order from my stand, QIA30 at any time. Please bring a copy of the order confirmation so I can make sure you get the right stuff!

And don’t worry if you circumstances change and you don’t manage to get to Festival - if you live in the UK I will post them FOC to your home after the show. If you live outside the UK and don’t pick up your order I will be in touch after the show, you will be able to either cancel the order or pay the postage for delivery.

And although I won’t have stock of dyes etc at the show I will be taking orders during the show for FOC delivery the following week. Minimum order value will be £20 and, unfortunately will only apply on UK address.

I hate that postage outside the UK is so prohibitive! And that so few of my European friends are likely to make the show …. hopefully 2022 will be a brilliant return to normal!

Thank you, Leah x

This is something I have been meaning to do for a while but hadn’t had the time. Now I have plenty of time so have been busy doodling different ideas. I have ended up with six new tried and tested thermofax designs which I love and hope you will to!

All six designs are available in two sizes - large gives a printed image approximately 17cm x 24cm and small gives a print approximately 10cm x 14cm. For those of you unfamiliar with thermofax screens they are a special type of silk screen that allows you to print fine lines or detailed designs onto fabric or paper using thickened dyes, textile inks or other media. They can be used to print interesting marks and texture all over white fabric before adding layers of colour on top or can be used on top of previously printed or dyed fabrics to add final detail.

Unfortunately I have had to increase my prices by £1 for the large screens and £0.50 for the small screens because of increases in the cost of the plastic frames I use. However I have added a new ‘soft edge’ option that is significantly cheaper. In the soft edge version the edges of the screen mesh are sandwiched between two layers of tape. Screens with soft edges are a bit more fiddly to use but I have made sure that you have a big enough tape surround that you can hold the screen firmly in place when using it.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to change how my thermofax screens are displayed in my webshop which I hope will make it easier to see the full range of designs.

I continue to ship all my products globally but I thought it worth acknowledging that there is currently a lot of confusion and some delays in shipping goods from the UK to the EU. There may be some of my products that are not covered by the new trade agreement and so may attract customs / import duty. However I’ve spent a bit of time looking at the European Commission site covering buying goods online from the UK and customs duty should not be applied to orders below 150 Euros. I’m also applying for an EORI number which should allow parcels to pass through customs more quickly. So, if you are one of my lovely European friends, please feel that you can still order from me!

New soft edge framing option

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

Those of you who follow me on Facebook might know that I have been ill for a few days and had a Covid-19 test on Monday. Which thankfully has come back negative. I wasn’t too surprised when I started to feel extremely tired as I had been pushing myself too hard to finish the book. But then I started dry coughing and was a bit short of breath. Me, husband and son had a long discussion along the lines of ‘you can’t have it’, ‘but I went to the supermarket last Thursday’, ‘but your were masked up and your hands were gelled’, ‘but I had to queue at the checkout for longer than normal’ ‘but you were masked ……. ‘ .The more we talked the more I coughed. So ‘nurse’ Joe took charge and a Covid test was booked. Husband moved stuff into the spare room and I was escorted to our bedroom along with a supply of books, jigsaw, devices, chargers etc. I’m not very good at being ill and I am definitely not very good at being isolated. But it was the right thing to do and I’m grateful for Joe looking after me and for making sure that I couldn’t infect my husband. And I’m grateful for all the kind words from friends and social media buddies!

I have been lucky. My test was negative so I can get back into the studio. Albeit in small doses as I’m still tired.

Which means I can get back to what I was doing before all this. Which was looking at postage rates. I had a little surprise a couple of weeks ago when I shipped a copy of my Breakdown book to Australia and the postage was £3 more than I was used to. I thought it must be a mistake. But no. Royal mail has increased to cost of shipping to locations outside of the UK and Europe by 20 - 30% depending on the location and service. They have also introduced a US only rate which is about the same as the rate to Australia - yes, it now costs more to ship to the US than to Canada. Their UK and EU rates have also increased albeit not as much. A quick check confirmed that international couriers such as UPS, FedEx etc also seem to have put their prices up. I guess because fewer planes are flying there is less capacity.

I also realised that my new book is bigger, and heavier, than my first book so can’t be shipped as a ‘large letter’. I have spent some time looking at different options and used past orders to test different scenerio’s. So I will be taking my website offline for a few hours tomorrow to switch from a postage system based on the cost of the order to one based on the weight of the order. Unfortunately my website doesn’t have the ability to set postage by product type which would have allowed me to separate heavy books from light pots of dye powder.

In the UK there will be three rates - £3.70 up to and including 1kg (which covers the new book), £5.57 up to and including 2kg and £7.79 for anything over 2kg (which is actually cheaper than I was charging as I’ve switched to a different provider). Outside the UK the weight increments are much finer so I won’t list them all! I have been using International Standard but am now going to include the option of International Economy which is very significantly cheaper if you are outside the EU. The downside being that it takes longer for post to arrive.

I am also making the commitment to you that for any order that weighs over 2kg I will check the cost of shipping via other carriers and, if I get it cheaper I will refund you the difference.

I wish that I could absorb these increases as I know that for some outside of Europe the postage may make my new book unaffordable. But, like many, many self-employed people my income has been significantly reduced thanks to that pesky virus. International Economy does provide a much cheaper option as does getting together with a group of friends to place a bigger option.

Apologies for a rather long post but I prefer to be transparent in my pricing.

Stay well, Leah x

I am very pleased to say that I have now started shipping internationally again. Postal services seems to be working better although there may still be delays shipping to some countries as they struggle to cope with Covid 19.

To celebrate I have decided to add my new Absolutely Darling Hand Dyed Fabric Packs to my webshop. Each pack contains 6 fat quarters of lovely hand dyed cotton poplin fabrics. Each piece is approximately 50cm x 50cm and the packs contain a mix of textured multi-coloured pieces and ‘nearly solid’ coloured pieces. Each pack is totally unique. These are fabrics that I had been dyeing for sale at this summers Festival of Quilts. With FoQ cancelled and no idea of when I will next be exhibiting at a show I thought I would make them available online.

I have also been busy printing fabric this week and have added some lovely new Wonky Print Inspiration Packs to my shop. And, as I promised I would, I have taken some of the yummiest bits of fabric and made bookmarks that I am selling to raise funds for the The Trussell Trust. The work that The Trussell Trust do to support food banks in the UK and to fight food poverty is more important than ever as we face a prolonged period of high unemployment due to the corona virus. I have made 12 bookmarks each in three lovely colourways and am selling them for £5 each. There is no postage on these and every penny will be donated to the charity.

And finally, when I set up my webshop I was only selling my book and set the postage rates accordingly. Since March I have been selling a much wider range of products. Some are heavy, some are light, some can be posted large letter and others need to be posted as parcels. I’ve spent some time looking at what the actual postage has been and tried to figure out a better, fairer system. So, for UK customers, I am pleased to say that I have been able to reduce the postage and packaging rates on larger orders with a cap on postage at £10. Postage and packing rates are unchanged for international shipping but I will review these in a couple of months time.

Stay well, Leah