Tuesday Nights Changing Lineup
We had a new student tonight and a possible ’student transfer’ that didn’t work out in the end. With that said, let’s start with our newest student.
Craig finished his butterfly with ease and seems to be another natural at this. He was able to do all the steps includinging the soldering (which is hard to get down on a piece this small) with little help on my part. He’s decided on a traditional type geometric pattern for his second project made with a large glue chip background. This is his finished Butterfly:
Christine took her glass home with her and planned on doing some cutting but her cat wanted to help and broke a few pieces she’d already cut! Even still, Christine was able to get most of her window finished this week and really only needs her flower centers cut. The thin sections of her flowers were a real pain in the butt and although I helped her on some of them she now understands how to cut thin, complex curves. We could have made the curves easier by breaking them up with lead lines but that would detract from the window. Plus her cutting skills have grown greatly by tackling these complex shapes. The rest of this window will be easy and it’s all down hill from here. She’ll be grinding next week for sure.
Amanda also worked at home during the week and is cutting wonderfully. She had a few ‘fun’ cuts in her window also, but I’d rather see our students work on projects that they chose that contain some hard-to-make cuts rather than fly through something that they don’t really want to make and that anyone can do. The windows we make in our first lesson are more complex than what other stained glass glasses allow you to start on. This gives the student a nicer window and a lot more skill and satisfaction. Amanda and Christine are always laughing throughout the night and really seem to be enjoying themselves. I know I enjoy having them in the class. This is what Amanda accomplished this week– you can really see her progress and her beautiful choice of colors. She has just the brown sea bottom left to do and then it’s on to the grinder next week.
Jane has finished grinding her window, wrapping it and has tacked it all together. All we need now is a border and she’ll be soldering next week. She had taken her pieces home to wrap last week and although she was worried about how well she had wrapped them it turned out that she had nothing to worry about. Wrapping small pieces is difficult because your fingers are always in the way– wrapping large pieces is equally as difficult because the foil tends to wander off center and flip around as you wrap the glass. All of Jane’s pieces, both large and small, were perfectly wrapped and pressed. I know Jane is worried about soldering her window but she’s made each process she’s done so far look easy. I’m not worried at all about her ability in the least and next week when she gets her hands on a soldering iron again she’ll see that she’s been worrying about nothing. Here’s what she has finished this week:
We were going to gain another student tonight at the expense of losing one on Wednesday afternoon. Joann will be transferring to Tuesday evenings from Wednesday afternoons but she was unable to make it this week. We’ll be looking forward to seeing her again next week and getting more of her Mallard Window cut. She’s another student whose cutting is impeccible.
I’ve had hundreds of students over the years and I can honestly say that the two groups we have learning now have caught on faster than most. Maybe it’s seeing how far some of the other students are getting along on their projects or maybe it’s the fact that they are all working on what they wanted to make rather than being forced to work on a window from a few easy hand picked patterns, I can’t say for sure.  But I do know that these people are turning out beautiful works.
Paul