It’s been a while, but Making Meaning is back! This series will be full of conversations about textile making and meaning. This episode is with Jayne Childs. We talk about lace and heritage and the passion to innovate and create as well as the history of materials and methods. We talk about creating artwork and wearable pieces, about the stories that old cloth can tell, about telling new stories through contemporary practice and about collecting and reusing lace.
Jayne Childs makes contemporary machine-embroidered lace under the name JC Middlebrook, Middlebrook was her Grandad’s middle name. Alongside her creative practice, she’s a research assistant in the Nottingham Trent University Lace Archive.
Careful study takes her work beyond nostalgia to highlight technical detail and hidden marks. She highlights the craftwork within the ‘machine-made’ using different embroidery and lace styles; her lace is drawn, digitised, made, finished -by hand and machine.
Recent work has incorporated technical drafts from a now demolished lace curtain factory. They are covered in words, marks and codes which would have been translated by factory hands to make the lace. Jayne used laser cutting and digital embroidery to bring those marks to the fore.
J.C. Middlebrook
Design Nation Notts Exhibition
Sock Gallery 5th March -18th April 2026
Stamford Arts Centre 11th -23rd May 2026
Ruth Singer 
Let me know what you think