Planning ahead

We've been planning for 2016. By 'we' I mean 'Mix3d Stitch' - my textile friends who I shared the Open Studios with last year.

There's potentially a lot happening on the arts front and over tea and nibbles we had a planning session last week. 

We will definitely be doing Open Studios again. It was such a fab event last year and really got us going. We hope to use the same venue, but this is a rented house and there is some question over whether or not we will still be here in the summer. The licence ends in May (can it really have been 2 years since we moved in?) and, in truth, I cannot face the thought of moving again. So, we've asked the landlords if they intend to sell yet ( we understand that they're holding  onto the house in the hope that the new railway line and a direct link into London will make its value rocket up! The line is not built yet so they might hold onto it! I've got my fingers crossed!) If they hold on we are hopeful that we will be able to have it for another year. 

If we cannot use here then we will use Yvonne's house - slightly smaller and in central MK so not on the Winslow Arts Trail, but it will be a great venue. 

Then later on in the year we've booked the new gallery venue I reported here at Christ the Cornerstone, the ecumenical church in central Milton Keynes. We've got it in October and the exhibitions will be "Mix3d Stitch and Friends: Change". It's a huge space with scope for work in a range of different mediums. 

But first we are doing a "Handmade and Vintage fair" in early March. To stand out a bit from the crowd we are using the theme blue and white. This is a good idea and was initiated by Yvonne's Russian porcelain collection. But I have nothing already made which I can put in. Blue and White aren't really my colours. So I need to get some stock together. 

Now this fair is not about 'art' but about 'craft' so I think I can assemble some work pretty quickly if I can just accept that. And I've made a start. Fabric from my stash with little dressing table mats (which I've had for years!) and a bit of freehand machine embroidery. And a button! It's vintage after all and you have to have a button! 

That's not a coffee stain but a shadow or something?

And a bit different but I admit it is hard to tell. 

And though not yet mounted, with a small frame to show you what it will look like in a mount.

I've got some larger mats (or they may have been tray clothes - they're a very fine cotton, like a lawn, so it's hard to imagine their original use) and I think I can do something similar with those too. 

And of course paper! There will be paper, so I coloured a batch of papers using brusho inks (old road atlas pages with strips from an old dictionary, gesso through a stencil and then brusho powder and lots of water spritzed on! Its a messy old business and I forgot to wear gloves so had stained hands for most of the weekend.)