Crochet ::: Rainbow Stained Glass Tealight!

Hello again!

I've been working on a couple of projects recently, 2 sewing and 1 crochet.... so as you've probably guessed from the title the sewing ones aren't quite finished!!

The journey for this crochet project has been a long one.

It stems from a love of Stained Glass Windows I have had since I was a child.  I love Churches, especially old ones.  I love the windows on a sunny day with the beams of sunlight shining through making bright colourful spots on the floors and walls.  My husband knows this and in 2005 took me on a surprise trip to Paris with the most important thing on the agenda being Notre Dame Cathedral.

I love the Victorian houses that have a colourful glass panel above the front door.

A friend went on a stained glass course and made a beautiful panel....I've only, as  yet, managed glass painting which is quite effective, especially for a non-artist like me!

It's probably where my love of rainbow colours comes from....oh!  And rainbows of course!

Over the last year I have followed the blog of Lucy at Attic24, another lover of colour and things homey and crafty, especially crochet.  In fact it was the simplicity of her blog and her 21st century approach to crochet that reawakened my crochet skills AND made me believe that I could write a blog too!

Anyhow..... Lucy wrote this tutorial for Jar Jackets....take a look.  I made one....but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.  She then made this candle trim with this accompanying tutorial.  Again, beautiful, but not quite what I was looking for.

THEN, last week there was this Ta-Dah!  Well again, not quite what I was looking for but.......

Inspirational.... the penny dropped...... the lightbulb came on...... I knew what it was that I had been looking for!

After our Fajitas last Thursday night, there was a perfectly shaped Salsa Dip jar washed out and begging to be reinvented.

There was this......

...It's my stash of Rico Design Creative Cotton that I bought from Cucumber Patch.

And this....

...my Twelve-Teen daughter's 'old' bead box.  The 'old' refers more to her than the beads...they are quite new in the World, but she is too 'old' to play with them anymore!

My Salsa Dip jar looked about the same size as Lucy's tuna tin covers, so I aimed for 40 something stitches with my yarn and 4.5mm hook.  I think it came to a quite snuggly fitting stop at about 45 chains.  I then Slip Stitched (SS) the foundation row into a circle, made 1 chain and began a round of Double Crochet or DCs (UK terms).

At the end of this I Slip Stitched (SS) into the first chain of the round, pulled the yarn through and cut it off with a 2 inch tail. 

I joined my next colour, made 1 chain, DC'd a row, SS into the first chain, made a chain, DC'd a row, SS into first chain, pulled through, cut off and started the next colour and so on.

Once I had reached the shoulders of the jar I decided that every 9th and 10th stitch I would DC them together to decrease the stitches thereby making the crochet smaller and tighter as it got to the screw top bit of the jar.

I then used this tutorial to make my beaded edging.

Well....the beads give it the sparkle of glass, the colours give it the stained glass look I wanted and it serves the purpose I was after!

So here goes the Grand Reveal........ Ta-Dah!!!

Here it is in the light so that you can see the rainbow colours of the cotton yarn and the beautiful sparkle of the beads.  It also shows off (as well as I can) how the crochet shrinks nicely over the shoulders of the jar to hug the screw cap part.

And here it is glowing in the dark.......

Hopefully this picture gives you the idea of how the light glows through the colourful stitches, see it dancing off of the surface of the table? (although it doesn't really do it justice).

And this picture again shows the light shining through....but also the lovely colours inside my Rainbow Stained Glass Tealight!

It's twinkly, colourful light is very pretty and pleasing but it's also very peaceful.

I'm off to make my bedtime cup of Green Tea and be peaceful with my Tealight.

So until the next time we meet, bye bye xx