The presents are wrapped. The cards have been posted. The tree is decorated. The fridge is overflowing. And the house is clean. Well, as clean as it’s likely to get. Hooray!

Time to get back to the studio and more breakdown printing! I’m keeping it seasonal. The above print was made by embedding crumpled Christmas wrapping paper in thickened dye on a screen and letting the screen dry under a stack of books. Well you didn’t expect me to use a traditional Christmas photo did you?

That said, I would like to wish everyone who reads my blog or follows me on Facebook / Instagram a very Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year. And I would especially like to say thank you to my lovely students - 2018 has been a year of firsts and your support has meant a great deal to me.

Love and best wishes,

Leah

Work by Lynda Edwards

This last weekend the eleven students in my Introduction to Surface Design groups printed some absolutely fabulous pieces of fabric. It was a real pleasure to watch them work and witness the occasional happy dance. The sessions were on using screen printing, thermofax screens, masking tape, string and paper resists to create backgrounds. They all watched me give the same demonstrations and had access to the same tools but each produced truly unique work. Brilliant!

Work above by Sue Wharburton, Maggie Pearson, Debs Nixon and Lynda Edwards. And below - breakdown screens ready to be pulled during next months sessions.

I have my two ‘day a month’ groups in the studio this weekend and it is a bit of a tip. Since getting home from Harrogate I’ve been busy breakdown printing different samples, soda soaking fabric (and drying it in the studio), ordering and sorting out Christmas presents (bah humbug), doing paperwork and generally making use of every bench. Around all of that I have been doing a bit of mark making and have done a bit more decorating in the bog shed. I may even have got some sleep!

Before my lovely students arrive for their Introduction to Surface Design session on screen printing I need to:

• Soda soak a few more pieces of fabric then clean up the mess this leaves on the floor. The weather has been very uncooperative this week!

• Varnish another 5 screens - meant to do this months ago when I could have left the studio doors open to get rid of the smell (apologies students!)

• Rinse, wash and iron all the breakdown samples and put a few of them up on my design wall. Hide the ones that are perfect illustrations of how NOT to breakdown print.

• Load the rest of the design wall with quilts and samples that show various aspects of screen printing.

• Make some more thermofax screens based on mark making for my students to use as background texture this weekend.

• Decide on the colours I’ll use in my demonstrations this weekend and test drive the new thermofax screens.

• Top up the print paste and thickened dyes.

• Double check that all my screens are really clean - a speck of leftover dye goes surprisingly far.

• Move Harrogate / show boxes out of the studio into the storage part of the bog shed.

• Clean the bog shed.

• Open the Amazon boxes, wrap presents and find somewhere in the studio to hide them away from my grandson.

• Clean the studio. A bit.

• Make it look a bit Christmassy (but not too much, bah humbug).

• Make sure there is a good supply of tea, coffee, juice and biscuits (must hide some of the dark chocolate gingers for the Sunday class). Thought about making mince pies. Decided to do more breakdown printing instead.

• Get some sleep….

My next Introduction to Surface Design courses will start in February. If you’re interested have a look here. My studio might be a tip today but by Saturday it will be an oasis of calm and creativity. But only if I get a wriggle on …

Whatever I have done in life I have always tried to do well; to be the best that I can possibly be. Now I recognise that there are lots of things that I’m never going to be any good at (foreign languages, clean manicured hands, nurturing plants ….) but that’s OK because they are not important to me. However teaching in my studio is important to me so I am striving to be the best that I can be.

I have worked hard to organise and equip my studio so that my students have lots of space to work and so that they don’t have to bring masses of stuff with them. I have had great fun making colour wheels to help and guide my students. And I’ve worked through my lesson plans to make sure I have lots of relevant (and hopefully inspiring) samples. But I realised whilst I was at the Knitting and Stitching Show last weekend that I don’t have enough breakdown printing samples. Don’t get me wrong, I have metres and metres of fabric printed ready for the art I need to make for my solo gallery at next years Festival of Quilts but those fabrics are in ‘my’ colours and have been made using breakdown techniques that fit in with my personal inspirations.

Not everybody wants to see rust and black fabric inspired by the decline in the cotton and mining industries. Strange but true. So this week I have been playing with other types of breakdown printing and with a slightly broader colour palette. I can’t quite bring myself to do pink flower inspired things or green landscape inspired things but I’ve had a thoroughly enjoyable time releasing my inner Jackson Pollock and squirting dye about. I may even let all my inhibitions go and print some screens at wonky angles. Blimey!

A very quick thank you to everyone who came to see me at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. And a quick hello to those of you who signed up to receive this blog by email!

My head is a tangle of new ideas inspired by the conversations I’ve had at the show and the responses to my stand. This is all still new to me and I have so much to learn. And so much that I want to do in the coming weeks and months. Watch this space but needless to say that it involves breakdown printing. It was also lovely to meet Alice Fox and Janet Gilbert who were demonstrating in the Art in Action space and to walk around the different galleries.

Exhausting but fun! And now I need to make up a batch of print paste ….

Using the magic that is scheduled posts I thought I would share the story of the bog shed with you whilst I am busy peddling my wares at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate. Yes I am talking toilets. Or bogs as us Brits sometimes call them. Specifically I am talking about a toilet in a shed. A bog shed.

(Bogshed were a very noisy punk band, much loved by my husband, much less loved by me).

When we built my studio a few years ago it was just for me so we didn’t bother plumbing in a bathroom. Instead I learnt to make art in two hour sessions. That being the cycle time to make coffee, drink coffee and for my middle aged bladder to want rid of coffee. It was very tempting to pee in a bucket rather than run the 10 metres or so to the house when it was cold and raining but the system worked.

Until I decided to teach in my studio. We quickly dismissed the idea of using a toilet in the house - we have 2.5 bathrooms but none on the ground floor; husband is rarely ‘human’ before midday and could scare the uninitiated; grandson litters the house with lego and other death traps; and I would have to clean my house loads. (The last reason was the real decider). Option 2 was to built a bathroom in the corner of the studio. But that would have meant sacrificing part of my giant print bench and part of the design wall. Nope. So we settled on option 3 - an outside toilet. Which is kind of funny because our Victorian house actually had an outside toilet when we brought it but we took it down so that we could add another window in the kitchen.

We needed to keep cost down so my father-in-law, Bernard, and son, Joe, took on the project. We lovingly(!) refer to them as ‘bodger and badger’ which will probably only mean anything to those of you in the UK and of a certain age. (Barry Chuckle RIP).

In the meantime my lovely students had to use a portaloo. A very nice one that was serviced and cleaned every week by a lovely man but did start to feel a bit drafty as we moved into autumn. Thank you to the weather gods for giving us mild, dry teaching days!

On paper we only needed a very small shed but then I thought about the added storage potential if we went a bit bigger. And so a 6ft x 8ft shed was ordered and five weeks later it was delivered and installed. Then the fun began. I kept the studio door firmly closed and tried to ignore the crashing and swearing. I did consider leaving the country but thought that might appear a little ungrateful.

First there was insulation. Floor, walls, ceiling, even the door got insulated - snow came early as the garden filled up with polystyrene balls. Then there was flooring, plasterboard, wiring and long consultations about where the toilet and hand basin should go.

Daily trips to B&Q brought more and more lengths of pipe, plastic brackets and bends along with enough electrical cable to surely rewire the whole street but eventually the shed was plumbed and powered up. It was tested by the grandson who, like all 9 year olds, couldn’t aim for toffee. He was officially banned from the bog shed.

A small dividing wall and internal door were added to give a better sense of privacy. Yes, the door is on upside down - there was a reason for this I’m sure. And then it was time for me to start painting and tiling (no way was I letting bodger or badger loose with a paint brush). Some nice soap and towels. Just in time for my day a month students to use a couple of weeks ago. The bog shed is officially open (except to Riley who is still banned).

Phew, with one day to spare I am already for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. The show is open Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th November and I’m going to be on stand TG626. Please stop by and say hello!

There are lots of things to do to get ready for the show. I am there to promote my workshops so I’ve spent lots of time in front of the computer getting new courses ready and online. I put the last two up this morning. Print Your Palette (21st to 25th October 2019) is a 5 day deep dive into screen printing that is suitable for beginners but also a great opportunity of those who have done some screen printing in the past but want support to refine their knowledge and to learn how to put fabric through multiple layers of printing.

The other course is a response to all those who need a little encouragement to actually use their printed and dyed fabric. Yes it is lovely to get our fabrics out of the cupboard to stroke them every so often but it is even better to see them hanging on a wall or laid over a bed! The workshop is called Print, Stitch, Go! (25th to 29th November 2010) and in it students will spend the first half of the week printing and dyeing a small set of fabrics which they will then use to design and sew a simple wall hanging or quilt. Suitable for people who have never printed or dyed before the workshop is designed as a fun, gentle 5 days of time away from the world.

And in between all that computer work I have been dyeing fabric to sell at the show. This is an important part of the preparation as it, hopefully, provides a good contribution towards the cost of doing the show. And it’s so much fun! I’ve aimed for a good selection of colours, lots of ice dyed pieces and layer dyed pieces, and have enjoyed bundling together sets of fat quarters. Looking at the boxes of fabric there does seem to be quite a lot of teals and blues but also some really nice golden rusty brown pieces. Which happen to be my favourite colours - strange that!

Hope to see lots of you there!

Alice Fox dyed silk with hand stitch

I am delighted to share the news that Alice Fox and Christine Chester will be teaching in the Urban Studio North in 2020. Yes that seems a long way off but both of these excellent tutors get booked up early!

Alice will be teaching her three day Rust Marks workshop (27th to 29th March 2020) in which she shares her experimental approach for transferring marks from rusty metals onto fabric and paper. Alice has a passion for the natural world and for using found objects and materials in her work. I am fascinated to see how she, and the students, work in an urban environment. You can see her work on her website here. And you can see more details of the class and book here.

Christine will be teaching her five day Poetry of Decay class (15th to 19th June 2020) introducing students to materials and processes that can create rich and textured surfaces based on their own photographs of decaying and eroded surfaces. Christines’ own work on absence is made even more poignant by her use of a restricted colour palette which she also uses in her class. You can find out more about Christine here. And you can see more details of the class and book here.

Inspirational images from Christine Chester

I’ve just finished setting up the studio for this weekends classes with my day a month Introduction to Surface Design students so it seemed like a great time to tell you about my new course - Creative Surface Design which starts in September 2019. I have developed the course for those of you who have had exposure to lots of different surface design techniques and have a head full of ideas but are not sure how to transfer ideas into finished cloth.

The course will be run over 5 weekends spread over an 8 month period. I’ve chosen this format rather than a day a month as being able to leave work on the bench and come back to it the next morning allows for deeper exploration of an idea; it allows you to take your time rather than hurrying to finish. Because I am ‘me’ the course will start with a focus on colour and the power of using a restricted colour set or family. There is a loose structure for each weekend but the exact content will be largely driven by the individual students. I’ll give demonstrations as needed but I am assuming a basic understanding of dyeing and printing techniques.

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I’m not a ‘sketchbook’ type of person as I tend to work directly, intuitively onto fabric with a lot of my design process happening in my head. But I do keep a journal where I write down ideas, and importantly, where I critique my own work. I will be encouraging students on the Creative Surface Design course to keep some form of personal record - whatever form they are comfortable with - and will have a one to one review with each student each weekend to support them as they develop their ideas and their own way of working.

All the details are on my website. Or, maybe you can come see me at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, 22 to 25 November, stand TG626!