FOR 16 years furniture designer and maker Paul Hodgkiss has been piling up odd limps of elm wood picked up from around Glasgow in his store room.

He didn't know what he would use them for, but always thought one day something would come up and they would be the perfect materials.

His habit of collecting random pieces of wood came up trumps when the organisers on Glasgow 2014 came calling and asked him to design the wooden quaichs to be given to winning athletes at last summer's Commonwealth Games.

"They're ugly little lumps that grow on the side of trees and are automatically cut off when a tree is cut up," he explains.

" Because we have been bespoke all these years, you're waiting for someone to come along and ask for a job which requires an odd little lump of wood.

"When I am looking for a bit of inspiration I wander about and think past the design to materials . I walked in there and saw all the lumps of wood and thought, 'That's what they have been sitting here for." It would take a lot of wood to make 1514 quaichs and it was all there.

"We cleared the shelves and the space that was left was incredible, it's the space of a workshop. We put in the wood lathes and that became the quaich shop."

Based in Glasgow's Muirend, Paul's talented team also made the podiums and the medal trays. All the materials came from Glasgow, including elm and sycamore from cut trees in the city.

He will be at the Riverside Museum today to talk about his journey to the Commonwealth Games, from the original spark of an idea to the story of how the wood was hand-crafted.

He will be joined by another six artists and designers in Meet the Makers, a day of amusing and informative anecdotes about their race to the finish line.

The distinctive medal trays, with holes for the medals to be placed in, were made from sycamore. Their design was inspired by the gold, silver and bronze to be presented to athletes.

"The main part of the medal design was the negative space idea where it was a fretwork of metal as opposed to a solid piece," he explains.

"That started me thinking, I've got to embrace that. There needs to be a hole and you need to be able to see through the medal. It can't have a background. "

He knew he wanted the podium winners stood on to receive their medals to give the appearance of being suspended in air, almost as if the silver and bronze winners were holding the gold aloft.

"We had to work out how to support the gold, how to connect them altogether and then we had the logo inlaid on the top," he says.

"It was a real challenge to get the podiums to function."

Paul was invited to the opening ceremony and was also given a chance to be behind the scenes during a medal ceremony. It was an incredible moment, he remembers.

"It really was very exciting. I'm extremely proud," he says.

Glasgow-born stylist and designer Kerry Nixon was the creative brains behind the fun and stylish outfits worn by medal bearers at the Games and will also be at the Riverside Museum to share insights into her work.

Now based in London, she made regular trips back to her hometown to work at Glasgow School of Art on the designs.

She has worked as a stylist with A-listers including Sienna Miller and Gemma Arterton, as well as her sister-in-law Kiera Knightley, and has her own bespoke label.

Designing the outfits for the Games was a whole new challenge.

"I wanted to design something that was representative of Glasgow; a dress that someone might wear on a Friday night out, something fun and young," she explains.

"The girls really loved wearing it and that was my intentions, that it would be a stylish and an enjoyable dress to wear."

All the fabric printing was done at Glasgow School of Art. An incredibly long process as each dress was made up of more than 80 panels.

"I didn't realise how complex it would be as the dress was circular and of course tartan doesn't really fit into circles," says Kerry, a former pupil of Hillhead High School.

" We had a wee bit of to-ing and fro-ing and I had to get a graphics expert to stretch every panel individually. On the pattern everything was digitally printed and then cut out individually, so they couldn't do it in bulk, and then sewn up by these amazing seamstresses. That in itself was a long, long process."

Kerry was at the Games, styling medal bearers before they went out in front of the public with the help of a full team of hair stylists and make-up artists.

"I saw the men's sprint final at the velodrome and that was where I saw the medal ceremony, which was amazing," she recalls.

" I was just so delighted. It was one of the best moments of my life, just to see them come out to the podiums and give out the medals, it was really incredible. It hit home then what I had been working on."

Other designers appearing today at the Riverside Museum are Jonathan Boyd, whose medals adorned the necks of the world's top athletes; Jilli Blackwood, designer of the Team Scotland's parade costume; 4c Design, the team behind the Queen's Baton; ISO Design, who masterminded the Opening Ceremony screen graphic and Tangent Graphic, the creative agency for Glasgow 2014's brand identity.

Call 0141 287 2720 to book a space at the free events.