Creative Saturday

Kaleidoscope Fruit Dish 30cm

Today I am working on a large Kaleidoscope fruit dish which will hopefully be finished in time for the Chapel Allerton Festival at the end of August. A friend recently asked me how I have the patience to cut, grind, clean and position every piece of glass before placing the glass in the kiln - well I don't.  Instead I work on a section of the design each day before moving onto something else which makes the task a lot less arduous.First I take my template, which I created by drawing concentric circles and adding radiating lines before photocopying it, then I draw out the radiating shapes onto the photocopy.  After that I decide which colours of transparent glass I am going to use and start cutting the shapes.  THis dish has 230 component parts, measuring no more than 30mm, so you can see why I break it down into sections!
The worst part is washing, rinsing and drying each piece, making sure there is no residue powdered glass or pen marks and the fun part is positioning the jigsaw of tiny parts onto the base clear glass before fusing.  Oh, I forgot to say that I don't have to remember where each piece goes because I take a photo of it on my phone before I start the washing process.
Even so, these dishes are quite labour intensive but hugely enjoyable to make. Here are a few more....

Deep Kaleidoscope dish measuring 20cm across

Deep Kaleidoscope dish measuring 20cm across

If you want to see more of #whatiamworkingontoday please view my Instagram or visit my Folksy shop for the finished glass products.

Digging for Victory

It's been a bloomin' good year for the allotment so far.  We have had a glut of courgettes and runner beans, done well with strawberries and sweetcorn and we are looking forward to potatoes and butternut squash.

It's not all been plain sailing though and we have made some mistakes such as: we didn't make good use of the space, didn't plant enough broad beans and don't even ask what happened to the peas! 

Rob the Robin 

One of the joys of working on the allotment is the wildlife, particularly visits from Rob the Robin, who likes to shout encouragement from a safe distance whilst I dig. Here he is, after his moult and sporting his new, sleek feathers. 

Next year we won't make the same mistakes that we did this year - just different ones :)

Scandinavian Style Quilt

It's finally finished! The red and grey sofa quilt has been machine pieced, hand quilted and edged in a stripey binding ready to snuggle up on the sofa with.  

I like machine piecing during the summer so that I can hand quilt in front of the fire during the winter. It's a very simple design of squares and rectangles edged with a figured white cotton.  

But I can't rest on my laurels because I have another quilt to finish and a new one to start for a very special person.....  

All my patchwork and quilting inspiration is on my Pinterest board HERE

Feeling Poorly - what to do?

Linen curtain remnants

I've not been very well lately so I haven't been able to get to the studio and make glass for a couple of weeks. It's boring being ill, there's only so many films I can watch and books I can read and sleeps I can sleep so I thought I'd do a bit of sewing.

Having chopped the bottom off a pair of silver grey linen curtains I am left with a length of fabric, ideal for making some napkins.  I ironed Bondaweb to the back of a piece of red patterned cotton fabric and cut the bid shapes out, then ironed it onto the front of each napkin.  After pressing it flat I machine stitched each birdy and now have four useful (if a bit creased) napkins. 

Voila! Took an hour. Now I'm thinking: lampshades, table cloths, tea cosies......

Tealights and Trinkets

Tealight Dishes

Over Christmas we snuggled up in front of the fire and watched movies by candlelight - very cosy! I bought lots of lovely scented tealights: frankincense and myrrh, Christmas tree scent and Christmas spice.

Tealights need tealight holders (doh) so I have designed and made some new curvy glass dishes that fit perfectly with tealights and small candles.  The colours of the glass reflect against a windowsill or wall by candle light.

Tealight dish

These durable tea light holders are now available for sale in my Etsy shop and includes a yummy scented tealight too.  

Tealight dish Etsy