Leedra

Leedra's aunt gave her a camera and 3 rolls of film when she was 12 years old. She has never been without a camera since. For several years she made all the family pictures, with younger brother, Linley, her main subject. That was just the beginning of the lifetime passion. Leedra's main photography passion includes flowers, birds and all things in nature, but she takes this detail to all things she photographs.

Leedra's talents are not limited to just photography and stained glass. About the same time she received her first camera she learned to knit, crochet, and embroidery. Leedra continues to knit today and has found another craft that she can make her own designs. Is currently designing felted purses and flat needle felting to the purses, for one of kind of purses. Has just started needle felting in 3D. While knitting stockings last year learned a new passion in knitting, fairisle knitting. Now also loves designing fairisle patterns for hats, including the earflap hats that are so popular right now.

Leedra then painted ceramics for several years before moving onto counted cross-stitch nearly 25 years ago. Leedra has completed very detailed Christmas stockings for her immediate family. Many of her x-stitch works are extremely detailed, elaborate pieces. She completed many patterns on clothing, adding beading to the designs. Adding beading to regular patterns was the closest she was able to get to designing her own patterns without software, and felt limited. Leedra was an avid cross-stitcher for many years, having a project constantly until she took her first class in stained glass. Since that time Leedra has done less x-stitch but still does the x-stitch work for Jimmy's wood memory boxes.

Leedra's "camera's eye" is what gives her the detail she uses in her stain glass creations. Leedra used a pattern when learning how to cut stained glass, after the first piece Leedra realized she had finally found a craft she could use her total imagination and found a new passion. She uses no software and frequently uses her own photography when designing her stain glass pieces. She usually creates the flower or bird, and then works from there to see what she wants to add to the piece. Sometimes this can make the background glass as hard to cut as the detail pieces, but Leedra does still cut all pieces by hand. At this time her favorite is her chickadees in the dogwood tree. She spotted a piece of glass and thought immediately how great it would be for chickadee wings. Stopped working her current piece and made 2 chickadees. Then had to decide what to do with the chickadees, she added dogwood branches and blossoms and ended with a total of 3 chickadees in the piece. Since Leedra loves to do very detail pieces she mainly uses the copper foil method for her stained glass, but she does know the lead method and has completed a very large lead restoration.