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Let’s Talk About Glass

by

howeeshow1

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m a crazed bead maker. An avid glass enthusiast. I fuse it and melt it and will mosaic it if that needs to happen. I teach bead making and glass fusing and have been fortunate enough to have appeared on TV showing off some of my skills. I’ve tried different techniques and seen a variety of demos. I have learned technical information and tried out different types of glass. I make jewelry with glass beads. I macramé curtains with glass beads in them. I am your basic lover of glass. That’s why I’m here.

My plan with this blog is to help you love glass too. I want to show you what other glass lovers are doing, what new products are out there to be used to alter your glass, any new glass available on the market, all of the places to go to learn about glass. All things glass.

With all of the conferences and organizations related to glass in the world there is a vast body of information I plan to seek out and write about. I look at this blog as my venue for information on glass that other glass lovers need to know. I will always be looking for more information and ask that if there’s something I need to know please share it with me. If you have classes or shows or meetings that need to be posted I’ll post them for you. The more information the better.

In my over 15 years of glass experience I’ve been privileged with a variety of opportunities and lessons which I’ll share with my readers. But I’m always learning more and plan to share those lessons too. I’m planning on tutorials and projects from myself as well as those of you other glass lovers out in the world. This is all about sharing the love because I feel beads are love…glass is love and I sure do love glass. It’s all about the glass!

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Printable Cross Stitch Sheets Make it Easy to Cross Stitch on Clothes

Lately I have been feeling like all of my clothes are looking a little worn or feeling a little tired. I don’t want to buy new clothes, though, so there’s been a lot of mending, altering and adding special touches to things that otherwise might get overlooked or not worn at all. 

As an example, not too long ago I added a little bit of embroidery to a T-shirt, which was a lot of fun to do and made me start eyeing all my solid-colored garments and wondering how they might look with some stitching added. 

Of course you can cross stitch on garments, too, whether T-shirts or woven tops, skirts, pants and more. But it can be tricky to transfer cross stitch designs to your garment to make stitching easier. 

Much like with embroidery, it’s great to use a water soluble stabilizer to keep your fabric in place while you stitch and to transfer your design (or your cross stitch grid at least) while you’re stitching. Then you just wash away the stabilizer when you’re done and it will look like the stitching has always been there. 

Ashley General Handmade uses Sulky Stick ‘n Stitch, which is a product I use, too. It’s easy to use and washes away cleanly. 

To make it even easier, she designed some printable cross stitch grids at different counts that you can print out to draw your own cross stitch designs, but you can also print the grid right on the Sulky, so you can stitch on top of squares and then remove them when you’re done. 

Brilliant, right? 

She has pages as big as 8 count and all the way down to 20 (remember: the bigger the number the smaller the stitches will be) that you can download and print to make your own designs and also use to make stitching on clothing easier. I’m definitely going to try this the next time I want to cross stitch on fabric!

You can grab her printables over at Ashley General Handmade.

[Photo: Ashley General Handmade]