I hope you are all enjoying a lovely, crafty bank holiday weekend xx I think it is going to be a piece for my sitting room wall with lights behind it.better get designing! It is the Easter break from my stained glass class at the moment and I'm feeling a little bereft without it! The group I learn with is lovely and really inspirational and I can't wait to get back to work next term on a new piece. These beach huts are done using the copper foiling method and I think I am going to hang them in the window as lightcatchers. I also made a few little pieces to use up scraps at the end of the term. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and I love the colour palette of rich, jewel like colours - I'm definitely going to remember this for future projects. Apart from the yellow glass I didn't have to buy any new glass for this piece.although it has barely made a dent in the amount of glass I have! I wanted to make something quick (ish!) whilst I thought about other larger designs and it was good for using up pieces of glass I already had. It is a design from one of the books our teacher has and it quite simple but one I've always liked.
I'm hoping to rectify that a bit over the Easter weekend but in the meantime I thought I'd show you a couple of pictures of my latest stained glass piece. I feel like I don't have that much to blog about at the moment - partly because I haven't had as much time as usual for crafting and partly because everything I am working on seems to be quite a big project so I'm not getting anything finished!!
I am really enjoying this latest design and hope to have the finished article ready to show you fairly soon! Now I have one I can't believe I didn't get one before - it is genius! So much better than the hoops - it actually holds the fabric taut! I got mine here and totally recommend it! Those wooden embroidery hoops always annoyed me and I was forever adjusting them so when I saw that Wendy had one of these square clip frames and said it was great I thought I'd give it a go. My latest project - a cushion cover with a bird and buttons on - isn't finished yet but I had to show you a picture to show you my new embroidery frame: I might make it into a stuffed ornament to hang somewhere even though the last thing my flat needs is more clutter! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet but I really like it - gotta love the leopard print. I spent some lovely hours in the sun stitching this:
HOW MUCH IS SAX AND DOTTY PORTABLE
Then, a few weeks ago, for those brief few days when it felt like summer, I needed a portable project that I could take into the garden so I spontaneously started an Emily Peacock design from the Valentine's issue of the magazine. She was thrilled with the cushion - in fact, so much so that when I last went round there she kept moving it everytime someone wanted to sit down near it because she didn't want to risk anyone squashing it! (Even though I told her that was the point of a cushion!!) I also found this fab fabric which matches perfectly to use on the back: I decided it was time to rectify this and the first project I went for was a cushion as a present for my grandma in a beautiful, bright gerbera design.
I've actually been subscribing to Crossstitcher magazine the last couple of years but almost never do any of the projects. Its such a lovely thing to do - calming and relaxing without taking too much concentration. Things have been a bit hectic in my life recently - lots of good stuff going on but it means not as much time for planning craft projects!! I think it is because of this I have been getting back into cross stitching over the last few months.