16th January 2025

Leah gave an interesting and informative presentation entitled 'My road to ruins and beyond' which took us through her journey in textiles, printing, stitch and quilt making.

 

 

Leah learned to stitch, knit,crochet early as mother and gran sewed, she went on to make her own clothes including wedding dress, but her sewing was all practical rather than decorative.

In 1986 she was asked to make a quilt - something she had not done before. Leah cut out 12" squares of fabric, sewed them together, backed , filled with wadding, stitched in places. From this Leah set out to learn more about quilts, she made more but then decided she wanted to design her own.

 She took a City and Guilds in patchwork and quilting, although she enjoyed the practical she did not like the sketch book element.Leah learned to dye fabrics,made quilts and to achieve the sketch book she put all the pictures she had taken during the creation of the quilt together.

Leah studied the making of art quilts, learned screen printing techniques and went in a new direction screen printing a piece of fabric and then adding some applique and stitching.(arrows)

The next technique was building layers - Sin city based on Las Vagas and gambling. The background for the piece was 'sin city'printed repeatedlyin different colours and font sizes to build up the layers and then had detail stitched in.

Leah's next was colour studies taking inspiration from Shanghai, she used procein dyes to print layers, then chopped up the fabric, arranged to give desired effect, then pieced/sewn together into a quilt/s.

The ruins series was based on abandoned/ruined buildings, featuring rust/moss/ industrial remains. For this Leah used breakdown printing- a process which gives organic marks/texture to create the fabric, which she then cut up , sewed back together and applied stitch to enhance - brick kilns were her inspiration.

 

Dinure featured colours based on lichens, stones etc and Leah used two different screens, one with calm/restful words, where she used lighter colours, the other with angry/worried/anxious words, where darker colours were used.

The Print series was inspired by the 'red top'papers and the typeface Frankin Gothic heavy.

Democracy - was inspired by the Brexit debates and who speaks for me. The pandemic and lockdown interupted this but did lead Leah to a 2nd book - Colour your Palette as well as online workshops.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Cadence series - blue-white-blue with an orange strip and stitch featuring in the middle, the theme being randomness.