It is that time of year when I set the studio calendar for the following year and I am very, very excited to announce the four guest tutors who will be teaching here at Urban Studio North in 2024. I love finding great tutors who push the boundaries of textile and stitch, using diverse materials and exploring different techniques and working practices. Please follow the links below to find out more about the tutors and their workshops. All workshops are available to book now.

Adventures in Experimental Coiled Basketry with Polly Pollock, 11th to 14th March 2024, £420 including £120 deposit.

Coiled basketry is one of basketry’s most versatile techniques offering a multitude of possibilities for making formal baskets right through to abstract sculptural forms. Coiling is different from other basketry techniques in that it is a stitched technique (as opposed to woven), and has many references to constructed textiles. 

The workshop uses the theme of “Seed Pods” which have wonderful organic forms, structures and textures, and will provide interesting jumping-off points for this 4-day course. You’ll be shown several ways of starting, which you use will depend on what materials you choose to work with.  You will then be free to choose how to take your work forwards, with plenty of guidance to help you decide how you want to progress be that with a more formal basket, or more experimental abstract form - the choice will be yours.

Metamorphosis with Stewart Kelly, 30th April to 3rd May 2024, £380 including £180 deposit.

A welcome return by Stewart as the workshop he is teaching this September sold out within day! The course encourages participants to develop a personal language through the exploration of combining drawing, colour, paper, fabric, and stitched textiles. This will be an experimental course, focusing on exploration, and the process of discovery through making. Therefore, the workshop must not be seen as a complete experience, where you will complete a ‘project’, rather you will conclude with ideas, potentials and an expanded tool kit for your own development.

Versatility of Felt with Clare Bullock, 20th to 24th May 2024, £475 including £175 deposit.

Felt is a very versatile fabric, you can make almost anything from it. In this 5 day workshop you will study a different technique each day. By the end of the five days you will have firm knowledge in felt making, a selection of samples and written instructions to guide you on your felting journey.

Quietly Composed with Amanda J Clayton, 9th to 12th September 2024, £420 including £120 deposit.

The course ‘Quietly Composed’ is aimed at those artists, embroiderers’ and textile specialists in particular, who wish to explore observational starting points and develop personal ideas through cloth and hand stitch.

Enjoy the calming nature of hand stitch whilst absorbing the serendipity of composition, with a pared down palette of neutrals you will explore the techniques of cutwork, darning, applique, layering and inlay using transparent qualities as well as your favourite cloth qualities. You will work towards developing an individual series of work from your own visual language.  

So that means 17 days for me to get through my lists. And right know it is all about Wonky Print Inspiration Print Packs and Absolutely Darling Hand Dyed Packs. Yes I am printing and dyeing fabric like a mad woman. I have 52 print packs completed and 45 packs where the fabrics have been printed and dyed but ‘just’ need rinsing, washing, drying, ironing, cutting, folding and labelling. My target is 120. Hmmm. I have 9 dyed fabric packs with a target of 50. Hmmmmmmmmmm ………… I may need to lower my expectations. Or stop sleeping. And it would really help if it could stop raining.

Still, I really love printing and dyeing fabric so I am in my element! The studio is full of colour and I’m as happy as a pig in a bath full of gin and chocolate! Not that there is time for gin. There is always time for chocolate.

Find me on stand B50 and if you haven’t already bought your ticket, use the code LEAHHIGGINS23 to a get a £2 discount.

Not that I’m panicking but there are only 25 days until Festival of Quilts opens at the NEC, Birmingham on Thursday 3rd August. You can find me on stand B50 near the theatre. Given that we set up on the Tuesday that means that I have 23 days to finish my preparations. OK so I am now panicking!

Being me, I have lists that ensure I pack everything needed to ‘build’ the stand and the display on the walls (note to self: must design and order leaflets!!!). I have lists that tell me how many pots of dye, bags of Urea etc that I need to prepare and how many screens and squeegees to order (more than slightly anxious that the screens might not arrive in time!). I have a checklist from the organisers for all the things that they require. I have arranged my workshops for next year (four great guest tutors that I’ll tell you about soon) but need to get the webpages set up. And I have a provisional target for the number of Wonky Print Inspiration Packs and Absolutely Darling Hand Dyed Packs I will need (a target is great but the reality is that it will be as many as I can get made between now and then).

And then there is The Creative Textile Studio which is to the left of the theatre at this years show. As part of the collective that organises and runs this wonderful space I have a long list of things to prepare and bring. Including dyeing 6 large pieces of fabric to wrap around the fronts of the demonstrator benches. Aiming for six different colours (including turquoise, officially the best colour in the world ever!).

Who needs sleep!

I hope to see lots of you during the show, if you haven’t already bought your ticket you can use the code LEAHHIGGINS23 to get £2 discount of the price of standard and concessionary tickets.

And on to my next ‘big project’. I’ve started filming an online workshop based on my latest book Simply Screen Printing. It’s been over 2 years since I filmed my Breakdown Your Palette online workshop and so a steep learning curve figuring out camera positions and video editing. Challenging but fun! I have to fit filming around teaching so I’m not expecting to launch the online workshop until September.

So in the meantime how about some wonderful breakdown printed fabrics. I had the great pleasure of being joined in the studio by a group of six lovely women from Scotland this week. A big thank you to Heather, Helen, Irene C, Irene M, Mags and Kelly for filling my days with beautiful fabric and laughter! I love my job!

The Museum of Old and New Art just outside Hobart in Tasmania was amazing, crazily bonkers and stupidly overwhelming. A fitting way to end my trip to Australia.

Mona run catamarans from the harbour in Hobart to the museum and that short trip alone was full of wonder … we sailed past a zinc works, a massive sprawl of rusty buildings, gangways, conveyor belts and chimneys that I could have spent all day looking at! But that’s just me!

The museum is built into a hill. Yes into. There are 99 steps from the dock up to the grounds and the entrance. I’m a bit of a building geek and I spent more time looking at the structures and the art in the grounds than I did in the galleries.

On entering the museum itself the guide suggests going down to the third level then working your way upwards. The first 10 rooms featured an exhibition Oceans of Air by Tomas Saraceno, each room having a different level of darkness. Some rooms were so dark his artworks seemed to provide the only source of light. It was really disconcerting at times and the lack of sense of direction was weird. His artworks were very varied, utilising a wide range of materials, some were fragile, some were in your face. An amazing experience but one that induced sensory overload.

I wondered through tunnels and vast spaces, looking at, but not taking in more and more, pieces of art. Too much for one visit. Which means that I’m just going to have to go back one day!

Thank you again Glenys, Chris and Roz for inviting me to teach, I would have never got to visit Australia otherwise, to meet so many lovely people and to experience so many new things. I owe you big time!!

And off we went again, this time with 12 new students for a three day workshop in the lovely Moonah Art Centre in Hobart. Temporary print surfaces fastened to our tables, we started with a little colour work - what else! - before moving on to a range of simple screen printing techniques. You will not be surprised to hear that there was plenty of breakdown printing along with some open screen work, some printing with loose paper resists and some masking tape resist screens. Most of the students in the group were new to screen printing but they all ‘got it’ really quickly and produced an amazing amount of work in just three days.

We had a lovely enclosed courtyard where we were able to eat lunch, dry fabric and dry breakdown screens. And they were very patient when I lost my voice (too much talking) and could only croak out instructions. As with every workshop I was tired at the end of each day but the happy, satisfied type of tired that comes from working in a group of creative, enthusiastic artists playing with colour, mark and shape. Yet again I find that I love my job!

And then there is the eye candy! In no particular order ……

I still have more to share from my Australian adventure but my feet are now firmly back on the ground and I’m hoping that I can entice some of you onto the workshops I will be running in my studio in Manchester over the next couple of months.

You can find out more about these workshops on clicking on their names but briefly -

Simply Screen Printing 2-day workshop on 10th and 11th June - this workshop is a basic introduction to screen printing using Procion dyes and is suitable for absolute beginners. You’ll learn how to use a screen on it’s own and with things like paper, string and masking tape to print 5 to 8 pieces of fabric. You’ll also get a brief introduction to breakdown printing. The cost is £180.

Breakdown Your Palette 5-day workshop 12th to 16th June 2023 - my favourite workshop, five whole days breakdown printing. Again this workshop is suitable for beginners and those with screen printing experience. We start by looking at colour when using Prion dyes before working our way through lots and lots of different ways to make and print breakdown screens. Along the way we also look at combining breakdown printing with discharge and you have the option to dye some fabrics to go with your printed fabrics. You can expect to print 8 - 15 pieces of fabric depending on how quickly you work. The cost is £450.

Simply Screen Printing (The Full Monty) 5-day workshop on 19th to 23rd June - we start with the basics as covered in the 2-day version of this workshop before moving on to a greater range of screen printing techniques. This workshop essential includes everything in my Simply Screen Printing book. We will use paper, string, thin plastic, masking tape, freezer paper, washable PVA, flour paste and sticky back plastic to add resists to our screen and fabric. We will mostly use Procion dyes but will also look at how to use a screen with discharge media and with textile inks. You have the option to dye some fabrics to go with your printed fabrics. You can expect to print 8 - 15 pieces of fabric depending on how quickly you work. The cost is £450.

It was an honour to be invited to teach at the Fibre Art event in Ballarat last month and just a little intimidating. One of the other tutors was the brilliant Ester Bornemisza who’s work I have admired for over 20 years so I knew I needed to do a good job! Thankfully my students made that that job so easy. All 12 had previous experience with Procion dyes and 10 out the 12 had experience screen printing and they absolutely flew! Being honest I think I learnt just as much from them as they learnt from me.

We started by looking at colour and specifically colour when using Procion dyes before moving onto different screen printing techniques. Inevitably the group did a lot of breakdown printing but I was also delighted to see great results from loose paper resists. Along the way the whole group helped print a long strip of fabric that was raffled at the end of the event … it raised $70 for the India Project that the Fibre Arts team run.

On the final evening each of the tutors set up a display of their students work. I asked each of my students to pick their favourite two pieces and I think our ‘exhibition’ looked amazing.

Maybe because it was a residential workshop the students really ‘gelled’. So much so that we set up a public Facebook group called Breakdown Printing Australia so that we could keep in touch and, hopefully, grow the love of breakdown printing (which IMHO is pretty blinking amazing) in the region.

So much fabric was printed …… below is some yummy eye candy! I had a wonderful time.

I really enjoyed my short stay in Melbourne. I took a ride around the city on the old city circle tram, wondered around the Docklands area loving the architecture (and the fish and chips and beer), and stopped by Federation Square where I enjoyed the new Goddess exhibition at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and had a wonder around the Ian Potter Centre (part of the National Gallery of Victoria). And had a lovely meal with my brother-in-law Damian and wife Sandra in the lanes.

The city was busy and bustling with so much more to see and do but what impressed me most was the architecture. Lots of quite unique buildings and skyscrapers packed into a relatively small space …. total eye candy, massive source of inspiration …. oh how I wish there were more hours in each day!