SerenTex

A happy meeting

2012-01-10T19:45:00.001Z

We had a very interesting meeting today, some people did manage some work and others spent the time catching up with each other’s news.

Both these lovely pieces above are Sue’s work. The one on the left is based on a workshop we had with Mary when we all listened to music and painted some artwork while listening. We then had to develop the work further and eventually create a piece of textile art from it. On the right is the work Sue developed from her collage of Welsh scenery for our latest project.

These were both made by Rosemary and she’s promised to some details of the special one on the left to share with you soon. The work on the right is again a scene from Wales developed from a collage fro the project.

These lovely collagraph prints were made by Trish.

We are all very proud of Trish, she won the Ann Cross Embroiderers’ Guild award this year with her lovely weaving of the seashore. She loves everything to do with the sea and it shows in this wonderful work. It was a great achievement considering the high quality of the work at the exhibition. Well done Trish.

Gaynor is working on a quilt binding, busy as usual and I’m sure she’ll let me photograph the finished quit next time.

When I arrived home I remembered that Rhiannon had also brought in a lovely piece of work in progress which I forgot to photograph, but instead I have another work of art, the cake she decorated for us today with the lovely coffee cakes made by Rosemary.

Variety

2011-11-25T20:02:00.001Z

It never ceases to surprise me what a varied array of work that we all turn out often from the same starting point.

Gaynor’s lovely quilt in progress.

Sue’s work developed from her collage shown in the previous post.

Rhiannon’s work.

Gwyneth’s work.

Joan, busy as ever. Trish’s work.

Mary’s workshop part 2

2011-11-08T21:33:00.001Z

These photos just show you how much fun our meetings usually are! This was a continuation of our last session with Mary using ‘mood’ music to create abstract art which will eventually be developed into textiles. We framed parts of our work to create new work on a fresh piece of paper.

Below is a piece Rosemary has already started using on of her collages from 2 weeks ago.

Collages

2011-10-26T20:43:00.001+01:00

These are some of the collages that our members created in the last 2 weeks.

Don’t they look Happy?

Collage

2011-10-18T18:55:00.001+01:00

With Sue’s encouragement we started our new project by choosing a favourite view in North Wales and creating a collage using paper from old magazines, these will hopefully be developed to create some textile work.

Watch this space!

The AGM

2011-10-14T20:25:00.001+01:00

Here are some photos of the AGM which was held on the 16th of August and I think someone needs to take this admin person in hand!

Here comes Rhiannon with something exciting hiding under greaseproof paper and held in place with clothes pegs. I wonder if there’s a possibility it will escape?

As you can see, Janine is desperate to find out what it is.

Would you believe I was too busy eating to take a photo after the wrapper came off?

But someone else insisted on taking a photo of me enjoying it.

Here is the actual serious part of the afternoon.

This is the following meeting on august 23rd. This was when we had a few days of Summer weather.

This is work in progress by Mary using her new Embellisher!

This is Sue’s work using Hundertwasser as inspiration. More to follow.

Music

2011-10-10T11:06:00.001+01:00

First, here's an appology from the blog admininister who has been very careless of late, forgetting to take the camera to meetings etc. etc.
These photos were taken with my mobile phone which I couldn't trnsfer to my new laptop, but buying a Belkin Bluetooth adapter has solved that problem. We had a wonderful workshop with Mary (Spence), she played us different tyes of music which we had to listen to and draw at the same time on large pieces of paper using suitable colours from our oil pastels. It was great fun. these are now going to be developed into textile art.

Mary is not looking very happy with us is she?

This is a beautiful piece of work by Rosemary, which she decided to make for our project using black, white and orange.

This work was started by Joan at Plas Tan y Bwlch during our annual Summer break together and now it's finished and hanging in her great, great granddaughter's room.

Cinderella

2011-07-26T14:46:00.001+01:00

Here are the two sisters off to the ball!

Cinderella being supervised by one of the sisters! See how she reacts in the last image? She’s getting very brave.

Here they are showing their true colours! But if you think all we did was laugh and play, then you are wrong. The group worked harder than I have ever seen them this year and there was less talking too. All the following work is work in progress and I will show you the finished work soon.

This is Sue’s textured wall.

A woven work of art by Trish.

Beautiful cards by Carol.

Jenny is making a lovely embroidered box.

Gaynor’s lovely quilted panels in progress.

More to follow!

Some eye candy from Plas tan y Bwlch

2011-07-24T22:46:00.001+01:00

I have some beautiful work in progress to show you, but not all in one go as there’s far too much for one post. as usual we are having loads of fun here.

This was taken early in the morning, in fact, before breakfast and Maggie and Joan are watching me taking photos in the garden below.

Here they are helping themselves to some lunch.

Patricia Sherry is the one who arranges all our retreats to Plas Tan y Bwlch and we are all very grateful to her. Thanks Trish.

Mary’s WIP.

This is just one of Gaynor’s quilted panels in progress.

One of Sue’s textured pieces in progress. I’ve just noticed the Midlife crises bit

These are Carol’s wonderful cards.

Janine’s Workshop

2011-06-14T23:14:00.001+01:00

Janine was teaching today and she chose to work with Angelina Fibres and foil which we all enjoyed. We are going to make items for sale at the EG Mini Regional Day of the Embroiderer’s Guild which takes place on Monday the 27th of this month.

This is a beautiful quilt designed and almost finished by Janine. If anyone local is interested in learning how to make a quilt like this they can join the Class beginning in September at the Community Centre in Craig y Don, Llandudno with Janine. If you are interested, please get in touch with me for details.

The photos of Sue and Trish were not very good this time

As usual, Rhiannon had baked us a lovely cake, so I had to forgive her for sticking out her tongue at me as I took her photo.

Here is our Egyptian fresco and a detail of it. I’m still not very happy with the quality of this photo.

Using our painted fabric

2011-05-10T20:08:00.001+01:00

We were just a small crowd this afternoon. Gaynor is poorly and I hope she feels better soon. Rhiannon who is our tea lady and confectioner is on a cruise and I’m sure she’s having a wonderful time. I hope she’s not worried that we’d starve without her cakes to sustain us because Sue had brought biscuits and Ann had made some lovely oaty cakes.

This beautiful piece of work in progress is Janine’s who started it on a course last weekend.

This is Sue’s work in progress using the painted fabric seen in one of the last posts. this photo does not do it justice – the colours are actually richer than this as the detail shows. it’s based on the architecture of Hundertwasser and will eventually become a vessel.

The work above is Joan’s with the detail next to it. Lovely as usual.

Here you can see how we all discuss each other’s work and come up with suggestions.

Project continued

2011-04-12T21:17:00.001+01:00

Rosemary deserved this cup of tea and cake after explaining what we had to do next with our painted pieces of fabric. Watch this space! Some of the keen ones had already started.

Work In Progress.

Mary is busy preparing for workshops she’s doing with people who are deaf and blind. A very worthy thing to do. Anyone who can think of a good project which will be saleable please add your suggestions to the Comments below. We have all promised to think of some ideas they can work on. The work will be sold.

Just look at them enjoying their cakes. Rhiannon had made enough cakes to feed us all, but only 7 of us turned up today!

Trish enjoying Joan’s photos.

Christmas/Easter Lunch

2011-03-19T19:25:00.001Z

The SerenTex members have been too busy to stop for their Christmas lunch this year, but now it’s nearly Easter we decided to combine the two and we had a lovely afternoon at the Pen y Bryn Restaurant, Colwyn Heights.

You may remember we painted the large sheet of calico donated by Sheila and Sue cut it all up so we could have a piece each. She wrapped each one up separately and put them all in a plastic back and we had a lucky dip. now we will see what everyone makes from their piece. It must be something inspired by architecture.

Here is Sue greeting Sheila with her piece of painted fabric.

Thank you Sheila

2011-03-10T11:01:00.001Z

This post is written especially for our main fan, Sheila. She donated this large piece of calico (amongst loads of other fabrics) to us and using it has given us a lot of pleasure and many more hours developing it further. Sue took the Workshop and brought all her paints and brushes with her for our use and did all the supervising which is no mean task believe me. we all took part in painting this large piece of fabric using any colours we fancied, then moved around the table painting on a different patch each time.

This piece was very wet, but there’s a clothes line in the centre for us.

Now doesn’t it look good?

Now the fun begins. I noticed the shadows and remembered how I used to make shapes on the wall when I was a child.

I like that idea, but this time the topic is architecture, not hands. This fabric will be cut up to give us a piece each to develop ourselves, so watch this space!

We deserved a cup of tea and a piece of that lovely lemon sponge cake made by Rhiannon once more. It was mouth-watering.

These are are pages from Sue’s mixed media journal. very inspiring. The one on the right was a firm favourite with everyone. I was going to add a video of them chattering away Sheila so you could hear how noisy they are, but it won’t upload just now.If you check back later it might have arrived. i hope you enjoyed the afternoon with us?

A noisy lot, this will surprise them all!

Development of our concertina sketches

2011-02-22T22:58:00.001Z

We have decided to work on Architecture this year and the work we did at the last meeting was the first contribution towards it. Then today Sue came up with a lovely idea for using these sketches to further develop them, this work will be shared with you before long. I’d also been thinking along the same lines and will encourage the very few of the group who are taking an interest in computing in using the sketches for designing. Mary was the only one who brought her laptop today and we both spent some time playing and below is one of my efforts using someone else’s sketch.

Gwyneth was working on a banner and I had every intention of taking a photo to share with you but was so engrossed in the laptop I completely forgot.

This is Rhiannon who has spoiled us all at each meeting by making us some scrumptious cakes to have with our cuppa, which she also prepares and we are all very grateful to her for all she does. This is an official ‘Thank you’ to Rhiannon!

Carol’s Workshop

2011-02-08T21:49:00.001Z

We spent a very interesting afternoon designing with Carol. We had instructions to bring a sheet of cartridge paper measuring 12”x4”, tracing paper, thick and thin black felt tip pens with inspiration in the form of photos or books on architecture. We are thinking about having a textile project on architecture this year. This was all she would tell us.

Today we were told to fold the strip into four, working on one part at a time hiding the rest. Using our inspiration we designed on each one in turn. When we had finished them all, the sheet was opened out then some additional lines or designs were added to each one to bring them all together creating the final work. It was surprising how successful and pleasing this was. There was a time limit an there was no forward planning. It’s not often we are quiet at our meetings, but today we were quiet until we had finished our work.

Hard at work.

The result.

1 2 3

The first piece of work is Joan’s which was inspired by Effie Mitrofanis.

The second piece was developed by Rosemary from the Doodles Workshop given recently by Gwyneth.

The third piece is another by Rosemary based on a mixed media piece made by Sue Gallacher in one of her workshops and developed into textile.

the first meeting of 2011

2011-01-11T23:26:00.001Z

Our first meeting of 2011 was fun and very relaxing. Gaynor got us all creating, starting by showing us some of her own work with circles and squares. We all spent the afternoon chatting whilst drawing and colouring, all with the intention of using the drawings to inspire new textile work.

This shows an interesting development.

As usual we have an awkward one who won't let me take a photo! But she must be forgiven once again because the orange sponge cake she brought us was delicious.

This is the beautiful work Joan created because she was bored during the break.

Forgive the quality of the images, but I'd left my camera at home and used my mobile phone.

Trefriw Textile Market

2010-12-04T20:24:00.001Z

This is a photo of Mags behind the counter. Trish was very happy to be at the other end of the camera for a change. Today was the first day of the Textile Market organised at The Trefriw Woollen Mills. Considering the weather was rather miserable we had a good day and maybe tomorrow more people will be able to attend. There was a great atmosphere there between all the craft people.

This stand to the left of us belongs to Helen Melvin and is very tempting, because it is full of goodies that can be used with the embellisher.

Some of the other stall holders near us. I was sorely tempted to buy one of these. I don’t know how many stalls were there, but this is only a very small part of the market. We were in the Cafe and it was very useful for a snack and chat with friends. So if you live near and are free tomorrow it’s worth making the effort to visit.

A good meeting

2010-11-23T21:01:00.001Z

For one reason or another I have been unable to go to my SerenTex meetings recently and I was so happy to join them all today and to see all they’ve been up to. We’d also like to say ‘Hi’ to our friend Sheila and to thank her for her generosity.

These are lovely and will be for sale at the textile market. We have all been busy preparing for this Textile Market and there are more photos of work for sale on the SerenTex stand lower down in this post.

TEXTILE MARKET

Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th December, 2010 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Hand made Christmas gifts, plus materials and equipment for textile makers.

Demonstrations on Sunday morning.

Exhibitors include:- Anne Campbell, Wendolyn Docksey, Helen Melvin, Ann Hughes, Serentex, Crafty Ladies, Mandy Coates, Christine Birch, Maggie Oliver.

Trefriw Woollen Mills, Main Road, Trefriw, Conwy Valley, LL27 0NQ.

Tel: 01492 640462 www.t-w-m.co.uk

in the centre of Trefriw on the B5106 between Conwy and Betws-y-Coed

Below is a small selction of the work for sale made by SerenTex members.

I’m sorry these lovely dolls are out of focus.

Gwyneth’s Workshop

2010-10-13T18:00:00.001+01:00

Gaynor and Gwyneth

Yesterday’s workshop was given by Gwyneth and we were all pleased to see her looking a lot better after her recent illness. She had us all Doodling on paper and then transferring our doodles onto fabric and stitching them in any way we wished. It was a fun project which I’m sure everyone enjoyed. for some reason I seem to be forgetting to take my camera with me to SerenTex recently, so I took these photos with my mobile phone. I had a lot of photos in it, but no way of getting them into my computer, but I have a Bluetooth USB adapter now and it was easy to transfer them.

Here they are busy doodling.

We love having visitors from time to time and this week Sue brought a lovely young lady from France with her. She is Marion (I hope I have spelt it correctly) She is a ship’s engineer who is also very good at doodling and stitching from what I saw.

We are all supposed to be preparing for our stand at Trefriw Woollen Mills on Saturday and Sunday, the 4th and 5th of December and as usual the ones who had work to show were Gaynor who’s made some lovely quilted bags as shown above and Rosemary who has made some beautiful soft scarves to sell. I didn’t get a photo I’m afraid. Next meeting I hope a few of us will bring some work that has developed from the workshop and that I will remember to take my camera. I mustn’t forget the lovely chocolate cake made by Rhiannon again. She does spoil us all.

At the next meeting a few SerenTex members are bringing their laptops and we will have a little play with a graphics programme during the meeting.

Gaynor’s quilted bag

2010-09-03T21:11:00.001+01:00

I found a better photo of Gaynor’s bag within a bag.

A perfect afternoon

2010-09-03T00:19:00.001+01:00

This is Janine’s lovely new studio. she has waited a long time for this because of the ‘Bats’. Yes, Bats! She wanted to create a studio from her barn, but because of the rare breed of bats that lived in the barn it took a long time to solve the problem and to be granted permission for the conversion. Now they have a home in part of the barn and Janine has her studio in the rest. It’s a perfect place for her to create her lovely quilts.

Can’t you tell Rhiannon used to be a teacher? (smile) This is a small part of Janine’s studio.

Fabrics dyed by Janine, we all wanted them, but these will be sold at the Helfa Gelf, the Welsh version of the Open Studios which she is having in the new studio Friday 10^th Sat 11^th, Fri 17^th Sat 18^th, Fri 24^th Sat 25^th. Open from 11am – 5pm except Friday 10^th which is open until 9pm..

I missed the last two sessions of SerenTex when Janine gave them a workshop making lovely book-covers like the one Rosemary finished on the left. The little purse on the right was also made by Rosemary using the woven piece she made after Trish’s workshop.

Rosemary also made this bag using a pattern designed by Gwenfai Rees Griffiths, the famous Welsh quilter.

This lovely quilted bag with the chocolate theme was made by Gaynor, the inside is rather special as there is a bag inside the bag, but it was too difficult to try and photograph it.

Wherever you find SerenTex meetings you will find food. So here is my plate of fresh wholemeal scones with jam and clotted cream. Mmmmm!

Catch-up

2010-08-17T20:35:00.002+01:00

will have to catch-up with Plas Tan y Bwlch another time because today I had a lovely visitor who reminded me I hadn’t posted a blog about our lunch at The Ruthin Castle Hotel. go and have a look at their website, it is a fantastic place and we were given a royal welcome with wonderful food, beautifully served. It really is a magical place.

We had not been expecting in this special dining room, but that is where we had our meal.

Just look at this chandelier!

This is Miriam the birthday girl. We didn’t come here especially for her but it did make the visit even more special.

This is some of the food we had.

My plate above is clean. But can’t you tell what Mary thinks of it? Carol is also enjoying it too.

But not half as much as Janine and Rosemary. I think we’d do well to have a little choir in SerenTex.

This is not a good photo of Miriam because the window was behind her, but it does show her with her gift and a doggie bag for Celyn (Holly) the dog.

This peacock gave us a real show. His wife and family took no notice of him.

Plas Tan y Bwlch(June)

2010-08-04T23:10:00.001+01:00

We all had a very productive time at Plas Tan y Bwlch again this Summer and I took loads of photos, but have been too busy to post them. I will attempt to share them with you bit by bit.

Starting with the food!

But as you can see from the next few photos we do much more than laugh and eat at Plas.

I like this one!

Maggie and Jenny are honorary members and come with us to Plas.

A bird’s eye view.

Work to follow.

Catch-up

2010-08-03T22:15:00.001+01:00

Plas Tan y bwlch(end of June) AGM(today 3rd August)

I don’t know what was going on here as someone else took this photo. I can promise you it was just good spirits and she definitely hadn’t been drinking.

We always have a good laugh at our SerenTex meetings and especially so at Plas Tan yBwlch.

This is Joan and as always she created some wonderful work.

Today I saw the finished work at our AGM.

Today we launched Joan’s new Powder Room and the work was especially made to hang here. Carol and Miriam were persuaded to try it for size.

Mary brought her daughter and grandson to see us, but guess who was playing with the dinosaur?

Food is a very important part of SerenTex life, the more fattening the better.

The only time we are serious and quiet is when we are eating.

I will have to have another Plas Tan y Bwlch catch-up tomorrow and it will probably have to be in 2 or 3 posts.

Work to show

2010-07-30T22:32:00.001+01:00

I’m not going to mention the friend Sue waves to in this post as I just noticed that I used her name 4 times in 2 sentences in my last post. But this work is Sue’s using printing inks at Plas.

Just look at this one!

Again, the two above were also by Sue.

This is a piece of work by Rosemary developed from a workshop we had with Janine. Wonderful.

Another piece of work by Rosemary, this time after a workshop given by Mary.

Rhiannon made this one after workshop by Miriam based on Hilary Hollingworth’s article in Stitch magazine.

Janine wearing the scarf she made after a Workshop with Helen Melvin.

Egyptian wall paintings

2010-07-27T21:36:00.001+01:00

You may remember way back in August of last year at our AGM there were photos of our Egyptian work in progress? Well, we were all very sceptical and didn’t think this was going to work and some of us found it quite difficult. We made fun of Mary, who had the idea. We should have listened to her, because she was right, as usual. Here is the work and it’s almost finished with all the work joined together by Mary. She is standing at the right and the feet and hands belong to Sue.

Sue wants to say hello to Sheila, so I thought I’d better show her face as well. We all wish you well Sheila and hope you will feel a lot better soon after your recent accident.

Hi Sheila! Sorry it’s rather blurred, but she would wiggle her fingers. (Sheila is the main member of our fan club and is just home from the hospital)

We are continuing with a fun weaving project which has proved very popular and we have been tutored by Trish. I will be showing some finished work before long.

Sue’s darning.

Rhiannon’s darning.

This is a project done last month with Miriam teaching us. I’m afraid this blog is behind schedule at the moment, so here is today’s work and hopefully working the way back in the next few days.

Rhiannon excelled herself and these cakes were mouth watering as you can see from the next photo of Joan and Rhiannon.

Our Rainforest Exhibition

2010-07-08T23:54:00.001+01:00

I know I promised to share full photos of the exhibition with you but I haven’t blogged for a while as I have been rather busy. But here are the ones I found for you tonight.

Carol Lee

Rosemary Kenyon

Sue Gallacher

Joan Park

Gwyneth Green

Mary Spence

Rhiannon Jones

Janine Jones

Above was difficult to photograph because it was under glass.

Margaret Roberts

Enjoy our exhibition.

Mary’s Workshop

2010-05-11T23:06:00.001+01:00

It look as if Mary has taken over the Bakery section from Rhiannon who regularly feeds us with lovely cakes. But no, she hasn’t. She’s mixing some plaster to create some very unusual fabrics using stencils, stamps, stitching and masking tape. Then we all tried our own, but as they are in shades of cream and white it was not worth taking photos of them. Next meeting we will be adding colour to them. Mary was inspired by a book called Get Plastered by Maggie Smith.

In the meantime have another peep at some of the work that will be exhibited at the Rhuthin Library Gallery from May 15th to June 19th.

Here are some details of the work you will see if you visit our exhibition.

This is Joan’s WIP. She herself is not very keen on it, but it’s going to be wonderful when it’s finished.

Rainforest and so on!

2010-04-27T22:42:00.001+01:00

We had a wonderful afternoon at SerenTex and I will share a few snippets with you from our Rainforest exhibition which will be opening at the Ruthin Library, North Wales on May 15th and will be open until 19th June.

The images above show some tiny details of the wonderful work that is being prpeared for the exhibition.

The above work will not be shown at the exhibition, but are also to be used shortly, so only some details are shown today.

Here is a group of us doing Gaynor’s workshop this afternoon.

Rosemary working on one of her lovely quilts.

I don’t know where Rosemary finds the time to do all this fantastic work, but I’m always so impressed with the quality and the quantity of work she makes. Today she surprised us all by bringing in one of her journal pages converted to textile and shown above. Isn’ t it wonderful?

Gaynor’s Demo and more tasters from our Rainforest work

2010-04-14T21:16:00.001+01:00

It was Gaynor’s turn to give us a demo this week and she showed us how to do some work using the hexagon and at the next meeting we will all be trying to turn out something similar.

This first piece of work is not from the Rainforest project, but is being stitched by Rosemary who says she picks it up now and then and continues adding to it. The textures are unbelievable.

Here is Sue showing us some of the work she’s making for another project of ours and it’s looking so good.

All the other photos are little tasters from the work in progress for our coming exhibition on The Rainforest.

Journaling session

2010-04-02T22:19:00.001+01:00

Miriam is going to kill me when she see’s this. I’m sure she would like to say hello to her family in Australia!

But fair play to Miriam, she did find me these for my Journal.

And Sue would like to show her friend Sheila this little bit she’s just cut out for her journal page. Hi Sheila!

A few more pages from our Journal.

2010-03-29T23:41:00.002+01:00

Here are some more of our journal pages to share with you. I hope you enjoy them.

Journaling

2010-03-24T20:32:00.005Z

This was great fun and an excuse to read magazines! Sue told us to take a colourful magazine and tear out the first three images that we liked. We were not supposed to think too much about our choice, but have an open mind. Then had to find 2 or 3 small images and cut these more carefully in detail. We than had to arrange these on the paper laying the first three ripped images as a background, then add the others to make a pleasing arrangement before sticking them down with gluestick.
Then came the next step, we had to find words or phrases that the image suggested to us.

There are a few more images to post, but I will add them an other time.
We each had a peiece of cake to celebrate Gaynor's retirement. She has been a Quilting Tutor for the last 13 years and has decided now was the time to stop to have more time to do her own thing. Enjoy your retirement Gaynor.

A taster

2010-03-24T19:21:00.004Z

This Memory Keeper was made by Sue after a tutorial given by Rosemary a short time ago. Unfortunately it was during the time I was missing. but I was sent photos by Miriam seen here SerenTex: Christmas Lunch and Memory Keepers.

Below are some teasers for you. They are details from work prepared for our coming Exhibition on the Rainforest and the finished work is a feast for the eyes believe me.

Anne

2010-03-23T22:25:00.003Z

I'm sorry to have to share some very sad news with you, our friend and SerenTex member Anne sadly passed away 13.03.10. Yesterday we went to a Thanksgiving Service to Celebrate her Life, followed by refreshments at Y Faenol Fawr. One of her last wishes was that we should have a Party to remember happier times together.

She was a very special person and will be sadly missed by all SerenTex members.

Christmas Lunch and Memory Keepers

2010-02-07T20:55:00.007Z

Miriam sent me these photos and insisted they should be posted on the blog because you never see me in any of the photos. She was sitting opposite Carol and myself at the Embroiderers'Guild Christmas Lunch in December. You can see we were enjoying ourselves.

She also sent me these photos of Rosemary's lovely Memory Keepers. This is a tutorial that I had to miss unfortunately. But I hope to make them before long.

These are Rhiannon's Keepers front and back. I will show you a few more as I get them.

Last week SerenTex had their Christmas Party and I'm afraid I was too busy eating to take many photos for you. These members were sitting opposite me and I think they are all getting a bit fed up with my camera hovering each time they move anyway.

Where we are!

2010-01-31T15:47:00.002Z

SerenTex: Serendipity/SerenTex

I refer Anonymous to this page above which is the first entry to the SerenTex blog.

After reading the first post of our blog I have just realized that the one thing missing is where we are from. How could we have left that out?

We are from a fairly small area of North Wales and our meetings are held in Old colwyn which is near Colwyn Bay. Most of us come from the Conwy area and a few from the nearby Denbighshire Area and we meet twice a month.

We are having our 'Christmas Party' on Tuesday. Yes, Christmas Party! As you can see we are a strange lot, but we decided a few years ago that we had so many other things going around Christmas time we would have ours at the beginning of the year and that is what we have done ever since.

A great workshop

2010-01-29T23:23:00.002Z

As some of you might know I have not been to a meeting of SerenTex for quite a while for one reason or another. The last two meetings have been very interesting and I had every intention of being there, but unfortunately due to unforseen circumstances I couldn't go.

Miriam is going to send me some photos for you shortly. Rosemary had a wonderful workshop prepared which they all enjoyed.

Here is a little extra interest for you all. Lou Gardiner has a month long exhibition at the Bluecoats in Liverpool. She is exhibiting from Jan 23 to Feb 27 and is giving a talk on the afternoon of the 25th Feb, tickets can be booked through Bluecoats. All the information about this and all the exciting things that she is currently doing are on her website Louise Gardiner - Embroidered art and Illustration.
Lou is such a favourite of our guild that I am sure people would like to learn all her news. Her exhibition is entitled Birds of a Feather.

Klimt with Gwyneth

2009-10-13T23:08:00.002+01:00

Today was Gwyneth's turn to inspire us to do something different at our meeting. She is our Goldwork expert and we are always teasing her that she always has to have a touch of gold in all her work. So it was no surprise that she chose Klimt for her workshop.

Unfortunately things did not go well for us. When I arrived they were all standing around surrounded by bags and boxes becuase whoever looks after the rooms where we have our meetings had gone away on holiday and the lady who stood in for her thought our meeting was last week. Eventually we had someone to open the door for us, but Gwyneth was at a disadvantage. some of us had started to get a bit talkative and by that time were not in the mood for work.

Here is Gwyneth ringing around looking for someone to open the door for us.

She was full of great ideas of things we could do and had photocopies of Klimt's work with her, fabrics, beads and gold threads too. We decided that we would only have time for some sketches and will continue with the stitching at the next meeting instead.

Klimt inspiration.

This is just a photo of a piece of work in progress that Mary had with her. Don't you just love these colours?

The day Seren came to SerenTex

2009-09-22T20:30:00.006+01:00

We have been waiting for this day since she was born and here she is at last, all the way from Canada. She's called Seren which is Star in Welsh and she certainly is a little star.

Here she is with her Oma. Mary already has a little grandson called Dylan in the Netherlands and she was there at his birth. The midwife said go to your Oma and she's been an Oma ever since.

And here is Seren with her Mummy and her admirers. She was far more interested in our works of art -the trees than her admirers! I'm sure if she could talk she would be telling us what to do with them. We are still in a state of indecision over them.

There are a couple of new ones in progress here.

If you looked at the blog last time you will have seen Janine's fabric for her wedding book. here is the finished article and it is so beautiful as you can see.

Then we had another lovely surprise, Anne dropped in to see us with her husband Joe. Anne has not been well recently and is waiting to go to hospital any day. We all wish you well Anne.

Get well soon Anne

2009-09-10T23:31:00.002+01:00

To Anne,

With love and best wishes

from

Cinderella, the Ugly Sisters and the rest of the gang at SerenTex

Problems!

2009-09-09T22:56:00.005+01:00

There are no problems here. This is a gift Janine is making for the bride and groom. It is going to be absolutely lovely and I do hope she will be able to bring it to show us before the wedding.

Now you can tell from these faces that there's a slight problem. When you see our trees individually they look good, but when you put them all together they don't look right somehow. We have been very lucky in the projects we have done so far that they have looked great when put together, but we can't get it right every time can we?

These two look very good next to each other. These are Spring trees.

These Winter trees don't seem right at all and I think I may have to make another tree using another technique. I quite like my tree actually, but it looks far too heavy beside all the other work having been made with the embellisher.

Let's hope when we next meet we can at least join a few trees that look good together to enter into the exhibition. There must be way of doing it!

SerenTex AGM 2009

2009-08-18T22:03:00.015+01:00

Time flies and it's another AGM, it hardly seems a week since the last one. This is how it started! In the last post there were photos of Mary's tutorial using Egypt as the source. Today some members brought along work in progress, so they were all laid down and the following is a typical SerenTex discussion.

Sorry, this video can be found on Digital Gran. Digital Gran: Testing video for serentex blog

Work in progress.

Here is the lovely quilt Miriam has just finished for her new grandson Isaac.

What do you think of this poser Sheila? I only wanted to take a photo of her lovely necklace.
There might be a Part 2 of this post!

Mary's tutorial.

2009-08-13T18:23:00.007+01:00

It seems I missed a great day at SerenTex. What a pity I could not have managed to be in two places at the same time. But all is not lost as Mary is going to explain what I have to do so I can catch up with them.
No prizes for guessing the subject though. Mary sent me all the photos for the blog. Thanks Mary!

Two short videos

2009-07-31T20:07:00.004+01:00

2009-07-29T22:03:00.007+01:00

We had a good crowd at the meeting on Tuesday and we all brought our finished circles. Janine showed us the next steps to a variety of different styles of books and she had some beautiful samples with her, but she'd already packed her things before I could take photos. She had her granchildren with her and at the bottom of this post you will see that they are both following their GM's footsteps. Amy drew a rainbow and Michael who is a little older drew lots of pictures and maps.

This is Sue's Spring tree which she's now almost finished, I can't wait to see them all together. We'll have Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter ready to create one piece of work by October.

Below is the work we started two weeks ago and finished at home.

I must admit that this one above by Rosemary was one of my favourites this week.

St David's Hospice

2009-07-21T20:46:00.003+01:00

There are 3 missing from this group, Carol, Janine and myself.

Here is the group with the piece of art Llyn Dywarchen and a cheque to present to the hospice.

All these members have had a birthday recently or will be having one soon, so they were presented with flowers. Mary, Anne and Trish were presented with the flower arrangements supplied by the Queen's Head (smile)

I had a Tiramisu with a large blackberry on the top and I was just about to pop it in my mouth when I was snapped!

I had to show this, it's been created by the people who are in the hospice. Isn't it wonderful?

SerenTex textiles

2009-07-16T21:23:00.006+01:00

Sue brought her beautiful quilt to show us how it was made using a similar idea to the work we did at yesterday's workshop with Janine. I have mentioned before that our Sue won the highest award possible for her Patchwork and Quilting, City and Guilds work, by being awarded the Gold Medal. This is one of her quilts shown below. I'm afraid I focused on Sue rather than the quilt.

Above and below are two close-ups from the quilt, but these don't do it justice either.

This is Joan's Iris which she had almost finished at Plas Tan y Bwlch.

We are all taking part in a project on trees, which we hope to put together as one work of art eventually. Joan being a perfectionist was not happy with the first one and made a second, but she's also made a third. well I think they are all lovely.

she also brough a beautiful card she'd made for Rhiannon.

Another workshop

2009-07-15T23:40:00.005+01:00

Janine decided to surprise us with her workshop and only gave us a list of things to bring with us. You can imagine my surprise when I realised that the work she did with us involved circles! I have been thinking in circles for the last week for some reason. A most enjoyable afternoon and enjoyed by us all.

We all laughed when Janine brough out a special sheet of paper in Trish's favourite colours and said she'd made it for her. You can see how pleased she is.
I will post some more photos of textiles which will interest you all tomorrow.

More Plas Tan y Bwlch - long

2009-07-05T18:54:00.015+01:00

This is day two at Plas for SerenTex and Sue arrives. It felt just as if the sun had come out and we all livened up,and the real sun did come out too. Hi from Plas from us all Sheila! A bit late, but never mind.

Carol and Sue.

Sue enjoyed painting and decorating papers experimenting with different techniques and she also did some monoprinting on Evolon which turned out really well, but I don't seem to have a photo of those.

I thought you would enjoy seeing Cinderella and the ugly sisters.

I'm sure you will agree that this is a beauty? This is the design Trish created for our project 'Trees'.

This is Carol's paper Flower Design that we started with Sue at a SerenTex meeting. This has turned out really well and the black and white photocopy looks as good as the original.

Joan also covered a lot of ground over the weekend as she almost finished her orchid piece shown in the last post. She finished the weaving which we all started after a demo by Trish at a recent SerenTex meeting, she called this one Hawaiian Sunset. Then she had time to start another embroidered piece of work on soluble paper which is unfinished.

This is a piece that our friend Jenny started at Plas. Jenny always joins us here every year.

A piece of work started by Trish and I hope to show you this one when it's finished.

This is Gaynor working on her quilt, which I think is called 'Transformation'.

I know I took another photo of Rhiannon and her tree, but I can't find it, so this tiny one of her working on it will have to suffice.

We were joined by Maggie and Mary on the third day, both 'proper artists' and next year we hope they will be with us for the whole weekend!

Plas Tan y Bwlch

2009-06-29T23:52:00.003+01:00

This is just a taster of our weekend at Plas and I'm sure the others will agree with me that Carol was the star of the show this year, so I show her work first. This is only a tiny part of the wonderful work she turned out in such a short time.

Retreat at Plas

2009-06-27T00:12:00.004+01:00

This is where we are going to be working this year, the stables block. It has been beautifully converted.

SerenTex Tuesday

2009-06-25T20:25:00.009+01:00

When you look at the next few photos you will understand why Chuckie Chicken is going to pick up the tape measure.

Well, well. Just look at this!

And this! Sue brought a Tiramisu cake to share, a BIG one. But fair play to Miriam, she deserves a large piece of that cake, she's just become a Grandmother for the first time. Congratulations to Miriam, Derek and the happy young parents.

Miriam is making this quilt for Isaac her new grandson. There's a lovely story that goes with the designs in this quilt and she will tell Isaac the story one day when he's older. I would like to share it with you too, but I think I'd better have her permission first.

This shows that four heads could be better than one when it comes to designs.

We're all computer literate in this group now as you can see.

Here is Anne's tree design in progress.

This is Rhiannon's weaving in progress. I think it's going to be really special.

This is Gwyneth working on her tree. I love this one.

Mary is busy creating work for her coming exhibition and it is hard going.

Just look at her needle. It got bent as she was pushing it through the fabric!

She had to resort to using pliers to stitch this.

We have two keen quilters in the group, Rosemary and Gaynor. This Bargello work is Rosemary's and is inspired by Global warming, she also had a lovely piece of weaving that I forgot to take. I'm sure Gaynor had some work with her, but I don't seem to have had a photo of it. Sorry Gaynor.

Weaving

2009-06-09T23:26:00.006+01:00

This is Rhiannon who is our birthday Girl today. She is so special she had 2 birthday cakes specially made for her by Miriam and Ann. The flowers she's wearing were a gift from Sue who had made them. She also had loads of handmade birthday cards from us all which I forgot to photgraph.

These are the beautiful tiny books Sue made from the samples she made when Carol demonstrated last month.

Here is today's tutor, Trish giving Gaynor some tips on weaving.

We all started on the project, but did not get very far with all the talking and the Birthday Party going on. Trish is our only weaver at the group and creates some wonderful pieces which you will have seen if you follow SerenTex.
Below are the 2 small samples she brought with her today with a book full of samples and handouts for us all.

This post is rather rushed tonight, so I hope there are not too many mistakes in it.

Carol's tutorial

2009-05-12T18:35:00.021+01:00

Above are some show and tell we had. the top one is a postcard made by Rhiannon. Her own hand made felt with hand stitching.
Below it are 3 pieces of work made by Joan and these are machine embroidered which is her speciality.

Above are the samples that Carol brought with her as today was her turn to be 'tutor'. We had a great tutorial and the work turned out well.

Here are some of the group working on different stages of the work.

These two on the right show two samples combined together and they look really interesting, so I can't wait to see what the finished pieces look like.

And of course there had to be cakes made by Rhiannon! One minute the tin was full, then almost empty. They were delicious.

Trees

2009-04-29T22:42:00.003+01:00

Gwyneth brought in her collage to shaow us and it was well worth the wait.

Sue is busy stitching her Lutradur card.

Now are these ladies working or chatting do you think? The lovely quilt is one being made by Janine and I think they are discussing the photos of Janine's holiday in Thailand.

Joan spent a very busy afternoon playing with the Lutradur which I had brought with me again. They looked very effective and I'm sure she will have made a postcard for our next meeting. She is on a roll just now.

Below is our latest project. we are making another group work using trees as the topic.

Lutradur

2009-04-16T19:07:00.007+01:00

Miriam's felting from a class last week. Aren't they lovely?
I knew she would have finished an article with her pieces of felt while mine are still untouched.

It was my turn to demo something new at the meeting on Tuesday and I decided to play with Lutradur (short tutorial on Digital Gran). I'd prepared 12 little kits and there was such a good turnout we needed them all. I think everyone enjoyed playing with the Lutradur.

After a shaky start and a restart things went well. But with hindsight, I should have told them to prepare the Lutradur first before colouring the poly cotton fabric. As those of you who have used Transfer Paints will know, the papers don't look the same as when ironed onto fabric. Unfortunately quite a few ended with strange colour schemes as I'd forgotten to label the painted papers. And all my fault (smile). But it did give them an idea of what can be achieved with Lutradur.

Tea break with a piece of beautiful Carrot cake each because it was Janine's birthday week. Did I ever tell you we give each other hand made cards when there's a birthday? I have two belated ones to make.
We were all very happy to see Rhiannon back with us after her surprise surgery. She was not going to miss another meeting and came back from a visit to the hospital with very good new to share with us.

This was as new to me as the rest of the group and when I was trying it out at home a few days ago I didn't think much of it, but the more I played, the more excited I became and I shall certainly be using it again.

NEWS EXTRA!

2009-03-28T13:45:00.011Z

Please visit this website at Coleg Menai, North Wales Patchwork student wins top excellence award. Liesbeth won the Gold Medal for her Patchwork and Quilting City and Guilds and you can read all about it here and also see some of her lovely work. Her tutor was Janine who is a member of SerenTex and has just retired. She herself is a wonderful textile artist and hopefully she will now have plenty of time to develop her own work.

You will fnd more about this piece of work by Janine SerenTex: here

Janine is on the right of the top photo and on the left is Mary Spence. Mary was interviewed for the coming issue of Fibre and Stitch.

A sample of Mary's latest work.

You can also read two wonderful articles by Sue Gallacher in the same issue.
Find some of Sue's work here SerenTex: Just Sue

Creating designs

2009-03-25T19:56:00.008Z

This is a design created by Janine yesterday at SerenTex.

We had a meeting and because I was so disorganised I missed the best part of all. Designing with Sue, I also missed taking pictures of all the preparation of the design work Sue had prepared. I saw them all, but as I had promised to help with some computing, I thought I'd do that first and then join Sue. But as you all know, things that should take minutes on the computer stretch don't they? That is how I came to miss working with Sue. Next time I will work first, then go to the computer.

This was Miriam's design.

As I had missed the two last meetings I had missed the beginning of this design work. Everyone had painted papers and brought them to the meeting and 'played' with Sue's paints and rollers creating works of art from them. I had painted mine ready, but don't worry, Sue let me have the rollers to come home to play with and that is what I did all day today. Anyway to go back to the meeting - these papers then became a vase of flowers, which were then scanned into the computer and converted to black and white images. These were again cut up, creating new designs using various interesting parts of the black and white images.
Below was a design made by Ann at the meeting.

Calico was then painted like the papers and stitched into, and from these Sue had made cylindrical covers, that turned jam jars into very nice flower vases. which is what I'm hoping to do tomorrow.

Here is a lovely padfolio stitched and designed by Rosemary. Below she is stitching another quilt.

And below Gaynor is also busy as usual.

While these two old friends are having a natter!

Some of us thought we could even create a work of art using the rhubarb Sue brought from her garden.

You didn't expect it to turn into a group photo did you?

Laughter

2009-02-10T23:25:00.010Z

There were only 8 of us at the SerenTex meeting today due to illness and family commitments.
Mary is in Canada where her daughter is due to have her baby any time now, we are thinking of you over there Mary. This was a draft and I have just heard from Mary, whose daughter gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter and they have called her Seren.
I missed the last meeting and therefore missed seeing Catrin, Ann's little baby granddaughter.

Ann gave us a great demo today of a technique from Stitch magazine stamping flowers in paint on clear plastic and stitching into them before cutting out. (I need to check which issue it was in and the author). I will insert at a later date. We all thoroughly enjoyed the demo. As you can see there was much laughter again, wherever we are there's fun to be had. It's the demonstrator laughing here.

Don't they all look serious? It only lasted a few minutes believe me.

And Miriam (on the right above) is also very excited because she is going to be a grandmother again a baby for Stewart and Holly. Congratulations to you all!

You will be thinking we are not a very serious group of textile artists, but we do have our 'fairly' serious moments now and then. This is how Ann and Sue tried to get us sorted for our latest project. There are 14 members altogether, but 2 are unable to take part. There are 4 parts to this project, now how many papers are needed? Now we all understand or do we? This has us all in fits of laughter as you can see!

The cushion below was made by Sue Gallacher and she is going to raffle it at the Wales Regional Day in June and Joan has promised one of her beautiful dolls. I am going to buy heaps of tickets for this raffle draw!

You will find a close-up of this cushion here.

This is the beautiful box Rhiannon has just completed. It's lovely and so were the cakes she made for us. She's the 'tea lady' at the moment, but when I was the 'tea lady' I didn't spoil anyone by making cakes for every meeting.

Laughter is the best medicine! (long post)

2009-01-13T22:31:00.010Z

This is a long post to make up for being quiet since October.Please scroll down right to the bottom in case you miss Mary's beautiful work.

The meeting was well attended, but I know two members have not been well. I hope Carol and Janine will both get well soon.

This was supposed to be a serious meeting to discuss what we intend doing over the next couple of months, but as usual it turns into a hilarious pantomime. Some of us are a little hard of hearing, lack concentration and have a very bad habit of remembering something of importance that needs to be shared with whoever is sitting next to us. This causes lots of misunderstanding and a repeating of important details. In the end we did decide where we are going to have a special lunch to celebrate one of Gwyneth's big birthdays. I won't tell you which one.

I think we also decided on our next project, what size we have to make it and what it is going to be mounted on. I think it was something to do with trees? Or was it black and white? Maybe it was the sea? Only time will tell. We did discuss other serious matters as well.

It was Gaynor's turn to demonstrate this time and as we were all in a silly mood by the time she started we were giggly as these photos below show. The actual demo was most interesting. Gaynor shared with us a way of creating a beautiful bag using plastic. This was a method she learned on a course she went to at the Llandegai Quilters Guild taught by Di Goodison, one time President of the Quilters' Guild. at our next meeting we will all be having a go at this interesting technique. I look forward to it very much. Thanks Gaynor.

On a more serious note, here is a tiny preview of the wonderful work Mary is preparing for her solo exhibition in Denbigh next November and December. Mary's work is going to have an international taste to it. She is well travelled having been to many countries all over the world. One of her favourite places being India. That is all I will tell you, but I can guarantee it will be well worth travelling far to see it.

This is what Mary calls a Practice Piece.

This is work in progress and the colours are wonderful.

Great meeting

2008-10-01T20:15:00.007+01:00

Recently at our AGM we all agreed that were not doing as much at our meetings as we used to and that it had to be a little more structured. You will see from the following photos that we have done quite a lot of work at our last couple of meetings.

This is a show and tell. Gaynor has just finished this lovely quilt and here she explains how it was made. She made all the required blocks and took it to a lady who then made it up for her with her long arm machine. It's a beauty!

Here is a better image.

This is also work made by Gaynor at a class she attended recently. This looked so professional and used a black bin bag, some newspaper, wadding, clear plastic and plastic thonging.
Below is some of the work developed after our shell embroideries demonstration by Rosemary at the last meeting.

As you can see Ann is busy working on a quilt. I'm sorry the photo is of such a poor quality.

Here everyone is busy doing something or other, so a great improvement on some of our meetings which had become, tea, cakes and chat with lots of laughter.

Shell Demo

2008-09-11T10:31:00.009+01:00

Now I wonder who she is? Do you think it's raining again?

Today it was new glasses day at SerenTex and some of them are very classy! I thought you would like a sample of them all.

Now down to business. We had a wonderful insight into how Rosemary makes her beautiful shell work. She'd been collecting loads of shells for us all to use.

This one she'd already box framed and brought with her to show. I'm sorry the colours are not so good.

Here are some samples of the work started. Perhaps some of them will be finished by the next time you look in.

The two pieces of work above are Rhiannon's WIP and below a glasses pouch in progress by Joan.

Eye Candy from a previous meeting

2008-09-02T22:47:00.003+01:00

This is a special message from Rosemary to her friends and relatives in Australia to thank them for finding this lovely quilt pattern for her.

August 26th meeting

2008-09-01T12:51:00.004+01:00

I have lots of work that should have been posted before, but instead of doing those now I decided to start afresh and follow with the others later.

This work is really delightful and I'm so pleased to have had a small share in it! when we were in Plas Tan y Bwlch in July I spent a little time with my friend Joan showing her how to use PaintShopPro. She came up with a lovely design which inspired her to make this piece. i'm sure I will be able to show you the finished piece of work before long.

Rhiannon is stitching this lovely dainty jug, which we all loved.

Miriam is working on this lovely work, just using left-overs! Not Miriam's usual style, but she manages to give whatever she does a special Miriam flavour. This time by adding some very pale dyes around the edge of the work. Lovely.

You will love this next one. It's Janine's Ton in progress, I think this is her third and they are all wonderful.

Here we see Rosemary and Janine discussing Janine's Ton inspiration and another piece in progress. We had a lovely meeting.
Our next meeting Rosemary is bringing in some shells she picked on Rhos beach and she will show us how she makes her lovely shell stitching and we are all going to have a go. below is a detail of her work.

SerenTex AGM

2008-08-16T14:08:00.004+01:00

We had our AGM at Joan's house this year and we had hoped for wonderful weather so we could wander around her beautiful garden. We did have a short period when it was dry enough to go for a stroll and take some photos outside.

Here is a longer video of our entertainment at the AGM. Briony, Joan's Granddaughter who is playing the Oboe is a professional musician as are her friends playing in the group.
Below are some of the beauties I found in the garden!

2nd Day

2008-07-15T23:38:00.005+01:00

This is how some of the work progressed today and below we are ready to relax with a bottle of wine!

Plas Tan y Bwlch

2008-07-14T22:01:00.005+01:00

Some of the SerenTex members have come here to Plas Tan y Bwlch for 5 whole days, each one of us doing our own 'thing'. Here are some photos of some of the things I noticed going on last night. I will keep you all updated.

Here is Sue stressing on us to wear a 'respirator' when burning synthetics, her husband has just retired from the fire service and was horrified when he saw how she burnt her fabrics. So now she does it safely using this special mask. I wear an ordianary little mask, but I think it will be worth investing in one of those.

A drawing day with Mary (Spence)

2008-06-25T18:10:00.008+01:00

We were all delighted to see Joan's 'Poodles' framed.

SerenTex went through a rather fallow patch over the last few months, due to illness, holidays, childminding and life in general. But yesterday made us realise what a wonderful group we belong to. We are like minded, get on very well together which is so important. We are all on the same wavelength and have a great time when we meet.

In November we are having an exhibition of some of our work at the Rhuddlan Library Gallery.

Yesterday we had a drawing workshop with Mary. It was fun, but we all learnt a lot from Mary's ideas, suggestions and advice. I think we will all be able to draw much better eyes from now on. Thanks Mary! I think one important lesson we all learnt, that even an hour's practice made us better artists. So the answer is to draw 'something' each day. We are going to have another drawing day soon. Below you can see some of the drawings we made of each other.

Mary is the one standing instructing Miriam and Rosemary. By the way, Miriam wants to say 'Hello' to her relatives in Australia! Thanks for looking at our blog.

This is the drawing Joan made of Gwyneth. Joan is the one standing behind Gwyneth.

More eye candy

2008-04-23T17:31:00.006+01:00

These are all textile cards sent to Carol on her birthday. The top one also happens to have been inspired by Ton Schulten and was made by Janine.

Ann was fortunate enough to be able to go on a short course with Kefyn Burgess where they all saw how the expert does it. He has 2 embellisher machines, one is the Janome Expression and she wasn't sure what make the other one was, but it did have 7 needles. They had the opportunity of trying out both machines and they also used a hand tool. The work below was made by Ann during the course and they look very good, considering she doesn't have a machine and it was the first time she had used one.

Lots of Eye Candy

2008-04-22T20:37:00.006+01:00

We had a wonderful SerenTex meeting again this afternoon, especially so for myself as I've had to miss a few recently.
There were more textile pieces inspired by Ton Schulten.

Here is Gwyneth's lovely work.

A close-up of the above work.

All the above is Carol's work which she brought in to show us, not quite completed yet, but looking lovely.

Blogger is painfully slow tonight, but it's probably my internet connection that is to blame. I will show more tomorrow.

Missed meeting

2008-04-08T22:48:00.003+01:00

I'm afraid I had to miss another SerenTex meeting and it was a really special one too. It was Carol's birthday party at a local restaurant known for it's lovely meals. She had cards from everyone and a lovely bunch of flowers as you see from the picture. I'd made her an Art Journal which she was very pleased with.

I can see all those clean plates, so the food must have been up to it's usual standards.

This is one of the sweets, doesn't it look nice?
I must thank Mary for taking the photos so I could share a little of the fun. I think there are photos of the textile cards made for Carol and I shall blog them as soon as I can. I understand there was a lovely variety.

Eye candy

2008-03-13T17:17:00.004Z

Here is a photo of some of my SerenTex friends at the meeting on Tuesday.

This very beautiful and useful bag was made by Rosemary who always has some new work to show us.

This is also Rosemary's work but she doesn't know what it's going to be yet, but it was inspired by the sea and sand.

Miriam says we have to wait and see what this one is going to be. It has stitching on it already and you will have to click it to see a closeup.

Here is another one by Rosemary. It was a batik she made years ago and is now stitching into, this is only a small corner of the work, but it's going to be really something.

Ton Schulten inspired

2008-03-11T20:50:00.003Z

I have some more Ton Schulten work to show you tonight.

This piece is only at the thinking stage, but here is the page from the Ton Schulten calendar and some of the fabrics chosen.

This Joan's third piece of work inspired by TS and keep getting better and better. This is a three cup bowl and is a lovely piece of work using the colours and shapes of Ton with FME on water soluble stabilizer.

Here is another lovely piece of work by Joan inspired by Ton.

And I think this one by Gaynor is going to be magic when it's finished.

This is my Schulten bag front.
Blogger is a little slow tonight, so I will leave the rest until tomorrow night.

Ton Schulsen

2008-01-30T23:18:00.000Z

Please go and have a look at these quilts by my friend Ulla Quilts nach Ton Schulten pictures from home & garden photos on webshots. She commented on the last post on Ton Schulsen.

This how Miriam cut up her Calendar Page to make another Ton Schulsen design. Watch this space for the next one, she's already made this lovely book cover.

Below is the page I should be working on. Did I tell you how we chose the pages from the Calendars? Everyone took the page for their own birthday month. Luckily Sue had more than one of these calendars as we both share the same month, even the same day! We are nearly there now as we both have our twin birthdays in February.

Ton Schulsen

2008-01-24T23:21:00.001Z

Vero left a comment on the last post as she has also used Ton Schulsen as inspiration with a group of ladies she's working with. So I have decided to make her an honorary member of SerenTex for this week and show a photo of her work which she gave me permission to share with you here. This is her blog Au Fil du Jardin do go and have a look at her lovely work.

Today I paid Joan a visit and took another photo of her work inspired by Ton Schulsen. It is developing beautifully, but I can tell you it's not going to be a panel or a book. Lets wait and she what she creates from it.

SerenTex activity

2008-01-22T23:15:00.000Z

See below how busy they all are!

Sue is making an altered book, just look at some of these wonderful textured papers she's made.

They are enjoying themselves! This is Mary's own special printing technique and below you can see some of the wonderful results of the afternoon.

Rosemary has been particularly busy this week. She made this wonderful bag and the casket.

A busy day at SerenTex

2008-01-22T21:31:00.000Z

Please take the time to click on each image, they are worth taking a closer look.
This post has been amended Wednesday January 23rd.

Our latest project at SerenTex is to use the work of Dutch artist Ton Veldmeijer(of course she didn't, she brought in the work of another Ton from the Netherlands called Ton Schulten ) to inspire any type of textile work. Sue brought in some colourful calendars of this artists work. I have been unable to find any of this type of art by him on the Internet (With the help of Hilary Metcalf I have now found a great Website ) thanks Hilary. He has a Gallery, but not with the type of work we are using. Maybe someone who knows his work can help me here? This is where Hilary came in with her help.

Here is Janine studying the fabrics she has chosen for the project. She is the City and Guilds Quilting tutor at Coleg Menai, Bangor, North Wales, and I can imagine the wonderful way she will interpret this one. Janine stressed how important the balance of colour is. I shall remember this when I start to think about my own work for this.

If you look carefully you can see the page from the calendar here on the left. we were not allowed to choose our own page from the calendar, but had to take the page of our birthday month!

Miriam has already finished hers and It's fabulaous as usual. It's a book cover. Wonderful isn't it?

This is what Rosemary has made from her inspiration. Another great piece of work.

Here is another photo of the casket, this time with the inspiration.

Here is Joan's New Year card for Rosemary. It's a delightful card and quite unusual.We had so much going on today I will have to open another post.

SerenTex Annual Lunch

2008-01-15T21:31:00.000Z

What a wonderful afternoon we spent chatting and generally having lots of fun. We all ate too much, but still managed the pudding. The Sticky Toffee Pudding was so nice I would willingly had that for the first and second course myself.

We had each made a card and then picked one made by someone else from the pile. I will show you some of the cards next time. Here they are on that lovely old fireplace at the Elizabethan Manor where we had our lunch. It's called y Faenol Fawr, a very popular hotel and restaurant in North Wales. The date on the fireplace says 1690, see more about the Manor House here Digital Gran: Reunion

This is decision time! What are we going to order?

Everything is settled and everyone is happy.

The stars of the show? Looks like it! We were presented with some lovely rosebuds by Sue.

Joan and Carol sitting quietly, but they are not always this sedate believe me.

The last photo today shows that we can be serious sometimes. (To be continued)

At last!

2008-01-08T22:57:00.000Z

Joan and Sue are enjoying themselves on the computer. I am very pleased about that.

Miriam says Hello to Norm and Barb in Australia.

Gaynor is very busy as usual finishing another lovely quilt.

Gwyneth, Carol and Janine are studying something important. I seems to have had a photo of everyone present except Rhiannon and I was so very pleased to see she has made such a wonderful recovery after her recent hip replacement.

This is Joan's work in progress. we are doing a little project which we are hoping to complete by our first meeting in May. this time we are all making anything we like using the artist Ton schulten as our inspiration. Joan's is well on the way to being finished already.

Rhiannon has started on a second piece inspired by Ton!

These lovely books were made by Miriam. These are strikingly beautiful and I'd love to have a go at making some soon.

There is also something for the quilters here. This is Ann's quilt in progress.

gaynor's lovely quilt.

And here is our Janine who is making lots of these beautiful blocks. I'm sure we will be able to show you some finished ones soon.

Our Snowdonia Project

2007-10-11T22:07:00.000+01:00

This beautiful quilt was made by Janine Jones, she is a very successful City and Guilds tutor at Coleg Menai in Bangor, North Wales. This is a memory quilt. Janine found letters and photos after the death of her mother. These were sent home by her father who served for some years in India during the 2nd World War. This would have been around 1945-47. The letters were on this very fine paper in tiny print, but she enlarged them on a photo copier and used them to write on her quilt. Her father's photo was transferred to fabric using a transfer solution and the colours in the quilt are reminiscent of India. The photo really does not do it justice.

Below is a detail of the quilt.

Here are photos of some of the individual works of art that were made for our Snowdonia project. A photo was taken from a book on North Wales of a lake called Llyn Dywarchen in Welsh, which is at the foot of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. The photo was copied and divided into 12 pieces and we each made our piece exactly 10"x8", we were not quite sure how to hang these together, would we leave a slight gap between each one or stitch them all up together without leaving a gap. When we saw them all together it was decided to do the latter. This important job is going to be undertaken by Mary.

SerenTex AGM

2007-10-11T21:16:00.000+01:00

We had a wonderful AGM at Sue's house. We get on so well as a group and there is so much give and take going on that AGM's are a pleasure. Sue chaired the meeting and named everyone who had made a special contribution during the year and we all clapped with enthusiasm. Then we were asked if we were willing to continue with what we did last year or did we need a change. I am quite happy to take photos and continue with the SerenTex blog, but I felt I needed a change from being the Tea Lady and Ann kindly volunteered to take over that job. A few other jobs have changed too, but as I did not take notes I'm afraid I've forgotten what they were. This is how the group operates everything is done in an enjoyable and light hearted way with a lot of laughing and joking.

A few people have asked if we are willing to invite more to join the group, but it was decided unanimously to stay as we are for the time being as a small group seems to be more friendly and united. It was also decided to officially rename the group SerenTex. It will no longer be called Serendipity, SerenTex was originally only the name of our blog. we have also booked our annual retreat at Plas Tan y Bwlch.

Sue had brought us all some thick, mustardy coloured felt flowers and we have a small project going, making brooches out of these flowers for the North Wales Embroiderers' Guild Sales Table at the Guild's EXHIBITION OF WORK to be held at the RHOS ON SEA METHODIST CHURCH HALL, Rhos Road, Rhos on Sea on Friday November 2nd and Saturday November 3rd from 10 am to 5.30 pm.
The entrance fee is £2.00 to include the programme. there will be demonstrations throughout the day, sales table and refreshments.

Work in Progress

2007-09-11T23:10:00.000+01:00

I know the title says WIP, but Ann has finished a bag with the fabric she made at the last meeting and it has been highly successful.

Just look at them! They are all so busy they haven't even noticed they're having a photo taken. Well done 'girls'.

Here is a new sample Trish has done today, it uses scrim and a variety of papers with thinned down PVA.

This one uses the same method and I loved it, but Miriam who is making it didn't like her effort. I'm sure she will have done wonders with it for the next meeting.

This is my all time favourite. It looks like a watercolour, but Trish told me her secret, some of it uses a serviette!

This is the brooch Ann was working on in Plas Tan y Bwlch. This stone is such a beautiful green and terracotta.

Joan is still working on her special box in cream.

Rhiannon is busy turning something inside out, but she didn't tell me what it was and I'll have to wait until she has had her hip replacement operation. All the best Rhiannon. Hwyl fawr!

I'm slowly converting them one by one to use the latest technology. today Mary brought her laptop and printer in as she was having printing problems, but now she is copying some pages for Miriam.

Here is Trish who didn't mind having her photo taken today. She's done a lot of the samples I have this time.

A great afternoon

2007-08-29T16:34:00.000+01:00

We had a fantastic meeting yesterday and not just because we had cakes made by 2 of our members. Can you see the cake tin on the table and how much they are being enjoyed?

Miriam and Ann are enjoying a joke as usual. Miriam demonstrated a new technique and we all had a go, we are not finished yet, so I'm not going to tell you what we are going to make. We have decided to make some things for the Embroiderer's Guild Sales table in November. Watch this space!

Sue has already made two quilted bags which are going to be sold. I was so disappointed when my battery finished before I could take a photo of the large bag. She was the 'Bag Lady' for the day, we usually call Miriam by that name as she loves making bags too.

You can see that we are still bringing together our sections for the Snowdonia view. They will all be joined together at our next meeting.

Below you can see what we were all doing after Miriam's demonstration. Unfortunately I don't have Joan's sample as I seem to have had a bit of a shake when I was taking the photo. Sorry. Joan is going to be reading this blog regularly from now on, she has just bought a laptop and is now on broadband. Well done Joan. Rhiannon is already enjoying hers. I'd like to take this opportunity of wishing her well, she is going to hospital for a hip replacement at the beginning of October. Hwyl fawr Rhiannon.

A few photos only

2007-07-11T22:13:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you are wondering why this the heading? I feel very guilty as I forgot to take my camera with me to the SerenTex meeting yesterday. Luckily for me, there wasn't a lot of new work there and I have a few photos from the last meeting for you.
Joan is making something exciting here, but I'm not going to tell you what it is until it's finished.

These shells were collected by Trish on a holiday in Ireland. I'm afraid I have forgotten where this beach is but I know it's a favourite place with Trish. Another place she loves is Plas Tan y Bwlch and she arranges our retreat there every year. Thanks Trish. I'm looking forward to our visit there once more and it's only just over a week away now.