Creating designs

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.