I spent most of the last quarter of 2019 working on my plans for local Christmas fairs. In my day job I work with computer systems in an office so attending craft fairs is a completely new experience for me and took me well out of my comfort zone.

During this time I created my stall look, had a few dress rehearsals and thought about what I was going to say to visitors. I also created a new range of fantastical flowers and leaves. I was making jewellery pretty much right up to the night before the fairs! I really enjoyed the fairs, it was really lovely to chat to visitors about my work and see which pieces people liked. Some people seemed to be genuinely blown away that you can make something so beautiful out of bobbin lace techniques and wire. I received lots of really positive feedback and sold a few pieces. It was also great to chat to other makers about their experiences. Overall it was a very positive experience and I can’t wait to do more fairs this year. With all of that experience and learning under my belt, I’ve decided to do something BIG. Big but scary, exciting but terrifying. I could have waited until I’m ready but if you wait until you’ve ready you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life. So I’m being bold and I’m going to exhibit my jewellery and lace art at The Handmade Festival with Kirstie Allsopp in September, https://www.thehandmadefestival.com/ Stay tuned for more on that soon.

BACK AT MY LACE PILLOW

January saw me back at my lace pillow working on a custom order, some wire lace calligraphy with flowers and leaves for a sixteenth birthday celebration. I’ve experimented with making calligraphy in lace before, it’s really great fun to create freestyle lace! I had thought I could wrap the wire calligraphy across a wire circle but that wasn’t working how I wanted and was sagging in the middle so I’m now creating the piece to go into a photo frame.

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INSTAGRAM LACE CHALLENGE

During January I organised a lace challenge on Instagram! I created 31 daily prompts and asked lacemakers from across the globe to get involved with the challenge to share their lace and inspiration. By the end of the challenge we had collectively posted more than 980 posts, all about lace and life from over 12 countries. It was a really great way to kick off the new decade, and turned out to be about so much more than lace, it became about connecting with our shared passion and creating a community. Although posting every day was a lot more time consuming that I thought possible, I really enjoyed reading everyone’s posts and I can’t wait to do it again. The hashtag was #lacechallenge_january2020 if you want to take a look at some awesome lace!

UPCOMING EVENTS

In May I’m taking part in the West Berkshire Open Studios. It’s going to be a busy month as I’ll have pieces in three venues; Stockcross House alongside Chrys Healy (Artist) Gemma Kirby (Artist) Emma Moscow (Milliner) and Martin Eastabrook (Potter), Willis Museum in Basingstoke and the Insight exhibition at the Base on Greenham Common. Exciting times!

A NUGGET OF LACE HISTORY

Researching ideas for my 3D Elizabethan-esq collar I spent many happy hours looking through my lace books at all sorts of collars trying to figure out the framework of my collar. Many collars in old portraits look as if the collar is freestanding, in reality this type of collar would have been supported or underpinned and the artist would have used artistic license and omitted the collar support from the painting, a bit like photo editing today. It makes you wonder what other aspects of the portraits were tweaked/photo shopped!

SOMETHING I’VE BEEN WATCHING

I’m really enjoying Secrets of the Museum on BBC. I’ve loved seeing behind the scenes of the museum and how much care and thought goes into conserving pieces in the Museum. The first episode showed how a cute, old elephant toy, Pumpie was sympathetically restored and how some of the Christian Dior dresses were prepared for the Designer of Dreams exhibition. It was fascinating to see how much thought goes into exhibitions, so much more than just putting a dress on a mannequin, lots of time and effort goes into preparing the mannequin so that the dress can be displayed as it would have been worn by its original owner.

NEXT MONTH

Next month I’m going to share some of my latest jewellery creations and lace art that I’m creating for the Open Studios.

Jane x