Tuesday Classes with a Wednesday Straggler
I’m sorry this is a little late but the Weekend Workshop post took longer than I’d anticipated.
We’ll start with Jane who left us last week with a pattern in her hand and some glass picked out. When she arrived this week she was carrying a project board that had her flowers cut, ground, and pinned to it. And the work was flawless!
She finished cutting the rest of her leaves, making sure everything was ground well and then wrapped what she had cut before she left. The picture below looks like there’s less finished than in the first one, but most of the pieces are now wrapped and the others are being taken home for foiling in a small container. This window is moving quickly!
Meanwhile Ellen came in and finished up the wedding box that she started last week. We had a bit of a problem when we couldn’t find a piece of clear glass that we thought we had to enclose the wedding invitation, but we eventually turned up enough in scraps. Clear window glass is now on our ‘must order’ list!
Ellen decided to use the same glass that she used in the small flowers for her border. The design allowed us to do this because the flowers dont rest against the border. If one (or more) of the flowers were cut off by the border we would have to go with a different glass. Luckily we only have one complete flower resting against the edge of the border so we were fine. The colors worked wonderfully and the box went together faster than you could imagine. Again, Ellen has done a wonderful job and is ready to make a 3D star next week before she starts her Fireplace Screen.
Lane came in at night and worked on the background to his Iris window. He brought back the rest of the Iris petals that he had taken home to wrap and we tacked it all together. The plan was to then slide the clear background glass under the irises and then trace each piece out, but instead it was easier to just lie the glass on top of what was cut and trace it out from above. It must have worked out well because all but 8 pieces were cut, ground and wrapped before Lane left for home. We tacked the pieces into place and were actually able to lift the window up on its end to take the picture this week. I predict that Lane will finish all his glass cutting next week and that we will have a picture of the window with 1 of the borders already tacked on. The other border will most likely go home with him to be wrapped and then he’ll solder this HUGE window! It was a big undertaking for a first project, but Lane stuck with it and is now starting to see just what he’s accomplished.
Normally this would end the Blog, but since I’m a day late and I have a picture of what Gerald did the following night I’ll just add it to this posting.
Gerald knew he wanted a Fleur de Les window and came in with a sketch of what he anticipated building. We traced out a square that measured 16 x 16 and then set a Fleur de Les into an oval that we then placed in the center of the square. Gerald added a repeating diamond background and some extra detail to the Fleur de Les by adding more cuts to it. He grabbed a piece of glass, traced out the ‘FdL’ and proceeded to cut his glass. By the end of the night he had the FdL cut, ground and in a bag to take home to wrap. It’s going to be a beautiful window and here’s what he got accomplished. Make sure to click on this so you can see all the detail Gerald added to it.
And that was it for this week. Look for our next post in the next day or so which will feature 2 windows that Russ has made over the past few weeks.
Paul