Our Sussex Prairie Garden inspired pieces - Verbiage - are all beginning to take shape. 
Jane is working differently, usually known for working big, this time they are small – three smaller pieces which relate to each other.
 
Sue D has printed up textiles and papers , the colours are lively and there is a vibrancy but she is finding it difficult to cut into them.  As a group we give feedback on her paper prototype, we ask questions around intent rather than just give our comments, we try hard not to influence how the work will develop. It is easy to give an opinion when sometimes this doesn’t actually help.
    
We are all behind on our third challenge, our textile book of techniques, again these will all be quite different, the way we will put them together as well as the interpretation of the challenge.  There is going to be a mad rush to get everything ready in time.   

Only a few weeks to go, its getting exciting, we all need to look at when we will be available to steward the event, what days can we all do, despite keeping the week clear, the diary seems to gather events and appointments without much effort, as they say - life has a habit of getting in the way – especially when it's about doing those fun things! 

We’ve all been using WeTransfer or WeConnect to transfer large photo files of our work, Liz needs them for the website and for our publicity.   
Once the exhibition flyer is ready we can look at timings of publicising the event, we also have our own mailing list from those who have attended our previous exhibitions.  

Liz’s ‘Verbiage’ piece, inspired by our visit to Sussex Prairie garden, continues to develop. She has yet to decide on which of the samples that she has made will be used but the developmental pieces she has brought along are fantastic, it's fascinating to see how the ideas have just grown and moved in different directions as she has played. 

Alison’s recent sketchbook work has also taken her off on new areas, we can all see the progression and it's exciting. We all get inspired by each others' development and it often sparks new ideas for many of us, each in our own individual way.  

Linda is developing ideas using textiles she has printed up already, re-purposing them, changing them and giving them a new life, feel and look.  It's very much in line with our recycle theme.  

Sue S has now completed her xx Diploma, it's incredible how she is managing to get the CT work done along with her other studies.  A few of us went to support her at her diploma exhibition in Stratford, a really interesting event displaying exciting textiles.  

We are thinking about publicity today. Times have moved on, we don’t think paper flyers are needed as much anymore, Covid has caused us all to move into the digital age. 
Liz will produce our exhibition flyer - primarily for digital content.  She has investigated the production of postcards, their cost and content, with a view to selling at the exhibition. Liz is also our  website manager.  We need to update it, keep it relevant and ‘alive’.   There is quite a bit for her to do.  

Jane is developing our new Instagram account, will we all log in and post or just a couple of us? We decide to each take a week to host the curious_threads Instagram. We will share photos and stories of our preparations for the exhibition.  What will we upload?
It's surprising how much time this all takes, but a picture speaks a thousand words, so we want to get this moving.  

Sue D is working on some more copy for the website and various publicity articles. We are pleasantly pleased with the publicity so far.  With any new draft we generally all provide feedback, it seems to  work quite well.  We like to agree the way we publicise ourselves.  

Liz, Jane and Alison have brought along some different hanging pieces, they are transparent and are likely to almost ‘glow’ as they catch the light, it should make for an interesting installation.  

Our Treasurer Sue S is taking us through the finances, what will be the individual additional cost to cover the gallery hire costs.  We talk about what we might sell and whether we should take out a credit card payment system, do we want to go there ……  

We all have various jobs to do and it has shown that we all bring something different to the group, different skills and strengths and it just seems to work.

Linda has brought along her Sense of Place piece, it features Venice, its beautiful and you can imagine yourself there, she has a couple of bits of additional stitching to do, but essentially its almost finished, it will look great on the walls.  

Amelia is not sure about her revised Sense of Place piece, she is wavering, from previous experience we know that she is a perfectionist and quite self critical, we haven’t seen the finished article but the rest of us reassure her that its likely to be a great piece.  

Alison as secretary produced our action minutes shortly after the meeting, we all know what we have to do, photographing our work and sending off to Liz to add to the website.

The Colonnade House staff are as lovely as we remember, they’ve given us some great tips on how to photograph our work, there is guidance from Richard at Colonnade House on YouTube on how to achieve high quality pictures and his top tips for using an iphone, we all going to watch it.  

It is clear that three textile hangings each for the installation is just not enough.  We are going to need at least 7 hangings each maybe more to make a sufficient impact.  The light is still great even on a damp and slightly dull day.   We like the idea of using a mix of solid and transparent textile hangings and will explore this idea further.  We don’t want to stifle the creativity of varied approaches to the textile hangings by defining too tightly how they should be – we want difference.  We may need some cohesive element later, but for now we want to continue without limits.  

The ceiling to floor measurement is 1.86M, so this has to be factored into our hanging length, so we will vary the length and type of hanging ‘string’.  

Next month we are looking at our publicity, we have got an article into CQ Magazine which is Part I, with Part II to follow in June.  

Its good to be able to work together again, we’ve all brought along our Sense of Place challenge piece.
We give each other valuable feedback and encouragement.
Alison is measuring and working out hanging options for the wall of the main gallery.   Colour combinations are interesting – do some of us have a preference for colour choices?  Well perhaps!  
It's getting real now, time is just racing by, we thought we had weeks to complete work but as life gets in the way there is much to do.  
We’ve agreed that sketchbooks on how we develop our individual designs for the various Challenges are usually popular. In the past we’ve had many people sitting down in the gallery absorbed in the detail of how we have each developed our designs.   Our work is all quite different, so we offer an interesting range of styles and techniques.    

We share our progress on the label sized textile pieces (Tags). So far we’ve done 3 strings each and it’s a great range of work, a myriad of techniques and ideas. 
We need to check how many we think we will need to create our installation idea at the gallery. 
We arrange to meet there next month, and create a list of all those things we’ve got to check.  Despite using the gallery twice before, its amazing what you forget, seeing it again will help determine some decisions.