Holy Mary!

I am a big fan of Mary, mother of Jesus. I am fascinated by the way she is held in such regard by so many cultures. I see it as being a bit feminist even.
But no culture does VM with as much style as South America. This panel fabric is one of my most treasured, and I was dying to try something different with it.

Four images of the Madonna. My favourite is the bottom right. We call Her Wolverine Madonna - if anyone threatens Her or Jesus, the gold spikes flick out from all around Her!
Inspired some pictures of OTT lamps someone emailed me, I decided to have a go. I took the bottom two and made this lamp:

It's only 7 inches in diameter, just enough for the two panels, and a piece of black herring bone tape to hide the slight shortfall. Trimmed with pink and black bobble trim and a mad red braid, we love it!
The slightly barmy lampstand came from an unexpected sale next door, DesignMade Showroom. This is a very poshe trade only establishment that throws random members of the public out on their ear if they don't go in with their account holding designer. Except for two days last week when they held a sale, which means that various importers brought their stock in to sell off directly. I went mad at the lamp base table and bought about 8 of them, two floor standing ones and the rest table lamps. This pretty chrome and black faux jet one was on my THIRD trip back for loot!

Anyhoo, today I started another one made from the other two panels and I am in MORE LOVE with those.
And my try at Dr Who related lamps has resulted in them all selling out of the darned shop

My first two shades, both sold, replaced and sold again!

This is all in aid of my stall at the Martinborough Olive Harvest Festival Night Market next Saturday from 4-8pm. We will be dressing warmly, selling lampshades and kits to make them, and promoting a class I am holding over there on 23 August. My sister Jo is coming to help and I know we'll have a laugh, we always do!

P.S. In my search for a decent photo of the panel fabric, I came across another one and I HAVE to have it.

Isn't it lovely! Such a different palette to the other one. I'm already imagining what I could do with it... :)