It’s been a while since I posted. Life has been plodding along …. I’ve spent some time working on quilts, I’ve spent some time working on my next book, I’ve spent some time working on jigsaws and I’ve probably more time than is healthy binge watching stuff (Stranger Things was totally amazballs as the young people in my life say!). But mostly I’ve been hanging about waiting for our house move to, well, actually move. Fingers crossed for January.

Next week however I’m doing something really positive and I’m rather excited. I am going to be a student in a workshop for the first time in 12 years. My last workshop was Working with Intent with Claire Benn and it proved to be a major turning point in my life. Next weeks workshop is TEXTure with Claire Benn at the InStitches studio near Workingham.

So why a 12 year delay? Back in 2013 I was becoming more and more emotionally involved in making art but didn’t feel like anything I made was uniquely me and I certainly wasn’t feeling confident enough to call myself an Artist with a capital A. The combination of Claires mentoring with time away from the demands of home and work enabled me to make a decision. A decision to get serious. A decision to start putting in the hours. A decision to give my art an equal standing in my life to home and work (henceforth known as the day job). A decision to cut out all distractions including workshops. A decision to focus, really focus. And I did.

Trial and error, lots of badly printed fabric, a fair few quilts discarded along the way, but in later 2014 everything just seemed to click and out popped Ruins 1. And the rest as they say is history. Because I have always had other demands on my time I have had to stay focused, even when I stopped working in industry and started working full time in my studio. When it comes to all things art I only spend time / money on stuff that directly contributes to my art.

So why a workshop now? The big house move will give me much more time to make art moving forward so its time for me to tackle something that has eluded me so far …. making smaller, more affordable art that is something more than a miniature version of one of my big quilts. I also want to include text in my work but in a way that the words are hidden. Hence a workshop on using text as texture that will, hopefully, allow me to create marks on a smaller scale and in a more controlled way than can be achieved through breakdown printing.

I’ll admit to being a little anxious at the idea of being a student after years of being the teacher. And concerned that performance anxiety, mild dyslexia and arthritic fingers will stop me achieving what I hope to achieve. But there is only one way to find out ….. wish me luck!

I have a couple of workshops coming up in the next few weeks. The first, a 3 day Luscious Layers workshop at Little Heath Barn is full. However one space has become available on my 5 day Breakdown your Palette workshop at InStitches near Wokingham. The dates are Monday 27th to Friday 31st October and you can find details here.

Breakdown is my favourite workshop and the InStitches studio is a fabulous space to work in. The course fee includes lunch, biscuits and cakes all made by Hazel. Her cakes are amazing!

I’m going to be teaching at both Little Heath Barn and InStitches again next spring and there are places available on both -

• 3 day Luscious Layers at Little Heath Barn 15th to 17th April 2026, find details here.

• 5 day Breakdown Your Palette at InStitches 1st to 5th June 2026, find details here.

In other studio news I decided to start work on my next book as a way to get past the disappointment of not being able to teach in Telluride. And a way of coping with the stress of the house move. I take a lot of comfort in making my art but writing requires periods of complete focus and that is what I need right now. The book is a complete rewrite, update and expansion of my first book ‘Breakdown Your Palette’. I’m not at all sure when it will be published as the house move, when it eventually happens, will probably interrupt photography but, for now, it gives me somewhere to hide from reality.

And on the house move front … we’ve dropped the price and secured a buyer, a builder, rather than do the remedial work ourselves. Fingers crossed that third time gets us over the line ….

You may have wondered why I haven’t been talking about my upcoming trip to the States to teach two workshops at the wonderful AhHaa School for the Arts in Telluride, Colorado. Well I’m very sad and very disappointed to say that we have had to cancel them.

While we started the multi-step visa process over six months ago, wait times have drastically increased under the current administration (find an article here with a company that the School have consulted with in the past few weeks). The School applied for premium processing in mid-August to get an answer by the end of the month, but were met with roadblocks and requests for more evidence of cultural uniqueness despite myself and Ah Haa submitting over 20 pages of supporting documentation including testimonials, articles, my CV and copies of my Bachelors and PhD certificates. (This is particularly galling as the first step in the visa process is to get a recommendation from an independent organisation that the workshops and myself as a teacher and artist meet the criteria for being culturally unique.) I don’t have any further evidence to give and, even if we got past this hurdle, the processing time for the final part of the process would take longer than the time we have left before the first class was due to start on the 25th September.

My heart goes out to the the team at the School who have invested so much time (and money) on what should have been a very straightforward process. And to the students we have let down. My art will continue to be exhibited at the School until the end of October but I’m sad that I won’t be able to see it in person. It sucks.

And in other news, because bad news always arrives with a friend, we lost our buyer (again) this week. They were put off by a request from their initial survey to get more specialist surveys. Ho hum. So we have decided to get the surveys done ourself and to get any recommended remedial work done before we put the house back on the market. We’re trying to stay positive …. those ice creams at Nardini’s will taste even sweeter when we do eventually get to Largs! And I’ll use the time to continue making art ……

I’m very excited that my solo exhibition ‘Beneath Our Feet’ at the AhHaa School for the Arts in Telluride, Colorado is now open and will run to the end of October. The gallery is open Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm. Telluride (and the School) are well worth a visit with lots of amazing places to visit and events scheduled through the year.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the exhibition in person and will be giving gallery talks on Thursday 25th September and Thursday 2nd October at 5.30pm. The gallery is only small but I love how Ruins 12 fills the end wall. I know it’s a long shot but it would be lovely to meet some of you there!

With little happening on the house move front I’ve been able to focus on making art and preparing for a period without a studio. I’m focusing on my Shoreline series and my goal for the month of August was to print 20 - 30 metres of fabric and to get two new pieces through the composition and construction process. We’re likely to be spending months in some form of temporary housing without a space to print in and without my big bench and big design wall that are a very necessary part of making my large abstract quilts. At best I’ll have a dining table to put my sewing machine on and the floor to roll / fold my work as I machine quilt my pieces.

The first two pieces in the Shoreline series used breakdown printed fabrics where I drew straight lines of thickened dye on the back of my screens then used the end of a paint brush to zig-zag through the lines distressing them but still keeping a hint of a linear mark. This time I wanted to create fabrics that were more chaotic so I drew swirly whirly patterns on the back of my screens then distressed them by using the end of a paint brush in a swirly whirly pattern …. I know what I mean!

I then printed the screens using clear print paste to transfer dye from screen to cloth. I wanted to create fabrics in a range of values which I did by controlling how many layers I printed. One layer gave very pale fabric, three layers gave much darked value fabrics. As each of my printed fabrics become touch dry I pinned them on my design wall. And made more screens and printed more fabric until I was happy with the collection of fabrics. Some of them looked a bit ugly as whole cloth but I have learnt to trust my process as chopping fabrics up can make ugly fabrics usable.

I never start with an idea of what the finished piece will look like instead I work intuitively. I respond to what is in front of me and adjust my work as I strive to create something that feels ‘right’.

As I was printing the fabrics I thought I would see what would happen if I moved away from my usual precisely pieced rectangles and strips. Would ‘improv’ type piecing work. So once my fabrics had been rinsed and washed I cut some pieces down into irregular strips using a rotary cutter without a ruler. Piecing them together was a bit fiddly ….. and, as I quickly realised, a complete waste of time. The subtle curves were completely lost amongst the busy marks on the printed fabric. And felt too alien, definitely not ‘right’ …. I really am a straight line kind of person.

So I cut irregular rectanges with straight edges. I sewed them together then cut the pieced fabrics into a strips which I then pinned to my design wall. I used my usual random picking process but aimed to have the bluest fabrics at the top and brownest fabrics at the bottom with the light value area weighted towards the bottom (detail photo above).

I used a stitch and flip technique to sew all these vertical strips to my wadding and backing fabric. As per usual I drew parallel lines on my wadding to make sure everything was accurately lined up. And then left the quilt on my design wall whilst I got on with something else.

And today I am thinking that I will quilt sections of the quilt using narrow parallel lines and a heavy weight thread, stitching at an angle. I’ve used masking tape to outline these areas guided by the edges of the pieced fabrics. I think that I’ll quilt the rest of the quilt using a finer thread and parallel horizontal lines. But I might change my mind. I might also chop the quilt down after quilting to get the ‘right’ proportions. I really do make it up as I go along!

(I’ve also printed 16 metres of fabric using an embedded object (sticks) breakdown method. The fabric is in the washing machine as I type. Haven’t started the second quilt. Very annoyed to not have got more done but was diagnosed with Lyme disease at the beginning of August. You could say that I’m ticked off. Still on the mend so looking forward to more hours in the studio over the next couple of weeks).

Where do I start …..

• Thank you to my wonderful friends and students who came to my open studio events. Especially Jane for her lovely gift and Geraldine who bought a very impressive and delicious cake. Thank you for buying art, fabric, jigsaws and books and for raising £63 for The Trussell Trust. And a very big thank you to Sharon who has found a home for those old quilts that would otherwise be heading for the recycling centre.

• Thank you to all the artists who volunteered to demonstrate and help in the Creative Textile Studio at Festival of Quilts. Hazel, Terry and myself really do appreciate the amount of time and cost that you spend to support the Studio. Couldn’t do it without you!

• Thank you to everyone who visited the Creative Textile Studio. I absolutely love introducing so many people to breakdown printing! Great questions, great comments. And thank you for buying my books and fabric from the sales table …. none of us get paid to set up the Studio or to work in the Studio so sales are always welcome.

• Thank you to the quilt judges who awarded Shoreline l (above) 2nd prize in the Art category. Shoreline ll was shortlisted for the awards. Such a positive response to new work is very empowering. I wasn’t sure if the muted colour palette would work but now my head is full of ideas on how to take the series forward.

Phew, it’s been a full on couple of weeks! In other news … we lost our buyer but within a week we had had 4 viewings and 3 offers so the big house move is back on! We’re not going to do any packing for a while which means that I have lots of free time to work in the studio. Time to get some ideas out of my head and onto fabric. Happy days!

A busy few days in the studio as I prepare for two upcoming events! Festival of Quilts and my upcoming workshops in Telluride, Colorado.

Yes it is Festival of Quilts time again. Where did the year go?? I’m not having a stand this year because of the house move but I will be demonstrating in The Creative Textile Studio on the mornings of Thursday 31st July and Friday 1st August and on the afternoon of Sunday 3rd August. This is the fourth year that myself and Hazel and Terry from InStitches have been organising the Studio and we are a well oiled machine! We each have our designated roles and a well tested packing list. I supply all the dyes, print paste, screens, squeegees and other stuff. So I’ve been busy mixing litres of print paste followed by thickened dyes. I’ve made six breakdown printing screens to use when demonstrating. I’ve also been getting some fabric packs ready to sell on the sales table. There won’t be many so if you fancy a Wonky Inspiration Print Pack you might want to visit the Studio early! We have a wonderful collection of artists demonstraing this year. You can find the timetable and more about each artist by clicking here.

(The Studio is a free feature within the show so the ‘book tickets’ button on the page is for buying tickets for the whole show).

Although it isn’t until the end of September I have been making colour blankets to take with me. I bought small quantities of each of the eight US sourced dyes we will be using during the two five day workshops to make them. I selected the colours online, trying to match as closely as possible to the eight colours (6 co-primaries + black + dark brown) that I use in my studio. Hmmm … so the colours on a screen don’t always match the exact colours that you get. I know this. I even have this disclaimer in my online shop. But it is always a pleasant / not so pleasant surprise …..I haven’t rinsed and washed the blankets yet but Houdini Blue is looking distinctly purple. I’m hoping that the colour shifts towards blue after washing in which case I can see why the colour is called Houdini! If not, well it has made some really lovely muted colours……

And finally, on the house move - we lost our buyer this week so it is back to square one. Knowing that this happens all the time and that it is just a delay doesn’t make it any easier. Thankfully we haven’t committed to anything in Scotland yet so we just need to take a deep breathe and get on with life. Which means that, when I get back from Festival, I’ll have time to get back to making art instead of packing. Which is a good thing.

I’m delighted to invite you to two ‘open studios’! I’m running them to help clear the studio and to spend time with some of the many students who have passed through the studio over the last 7 years. The first one will be next Wednesday 23rd July from 1pm to 3pm. The second will be on Tuesday 29th July, also from 1pm to 3pm. In both cases the wooden gates at the side of the house will be open and you can just walk up to the studio (email me if you need the address - admin@leahhiggins.co.uk).

There will be tea, coffee and cake! There will also be lots of my older quilts up for grabs, fabric packs, second hand textile books and the odd jug / orange bucket. It would be lovely to see you!

Having shipped the art for my exhibition in Telluride I have been able to work through my fabric mountain and have loaded lots of lovely printed fabrics onto my website. You can find them here. There are some really lovely pieces which I have been tempted to keep. But there are only 24 hours in every day ….so my loss could be your gain!

Our house sale is going smoothly and it’s now time to pack up my studio. Which is heartbreaking but I know that I’ll end up with another beautiful studio eventually. That studio however is likely to be smaller than this one and I can’t take everything with me. So, a few months ago, I listed the art that isn’t moving with us on my website at really reduced prices. I’ll be taking the unsold pieces off the website in about 10 days and finding alternate homes for them. So if you haven’t had a look yet please do. You can find them here.

I’d also like to say thank you to those of you who have bought my Simply Screen Printing book from Amazon. If you live outside the UK this can save you a small fortune in shipping costs!

And thank you to TextileArtist.org. My workshop with them is going really well and I may have converted more people to the sheer joy that is breakdown printing.

In other news I will be shipping work for my upcoming exhibition in Telluride, Colorado next week. I thought you might like a peek at one of the new pieces. Here is Ruins 14: Lowrys Chimneys ……