Irises, Wands, and Cabinet Doors
With everyone being productive we have three completed projects to start this weeks Blog post for us.
Jane finished her Iris window while she was at home this past week. She brought it in so we could color it and then take pictures. It looks great and her work, as always, is fantastic. The window is about 3 foot by 3 foot so don’t let the picture fool you into thinking that this was an average sized piece.  We hung it up outside and snapped a few pictures of it for you to see. After that was finished Jane cut out a Christmas Tree Suncatcher and then decided do another one with the leftover glass at home.
Cheryl has wrapped up all her work on her Magic Wands! It was a long process but trust me when I say that they only look simple to make. There is a surprising amount of work in each of these and if you try to rush it you end up with a very rough looking wand rather than the elegant pieces that Cheryl created. She was worried for a while that they might not get done before the new year but it turns out that she had nothing to worry about. She made 9 wands and this past Tuesday she made the 9 stands to display the and then she washed them and waxed them all so I could take this picture. There are three missing in the picture below only because the heat of the solder unglued the glass Crystals from 3 of the mountings and we had to epoxy them back into place. I checked on them them yesterday and they’re as solid as can be now.
Joey finished grinding the last cabinet door in his set of 8. It’s the same length as the 5 large doors that he made but it’s only as wide as the 2 small doors that he made. It looks like he’ll be finished with the last one sometime next week and he can finally move on to something else. All that repetitive work was worth it though, as you can see in this picture of Joey and Cheryl’s kitchen.
Mark Cut up all the pieces of his paper pattern for his next window and then traced out all the green leaves onto the glass. By the end of thenight he’d managed to get all of the leaves cut out and placed on his pattern. He’s a little worried about the size of some of the pieces in the flowers, but there are only a few tricky small pieces so I think he’s going to do just fine. He’s picked a nice dark Maroon color for the flowers that you may just see here next week.
Janice and Grace were going to be working on soldering their window but Grace was saddled with homework which means that Janice was the one who did 95% of the soldering this week. Rather than show you a window covered in chemicals I took a closeup of one of the flowers so you can see how some of the lines have a nice bead on them while others are just tack soldered and therefore flat. Janice did a great job and got really far considering she was working alone this week!
Mary Lynn got to see the pattern for her new window and she must like it because she took the time to trace it out and then cut it up. Here’s a picture of the pattern she’s working on. Expect to see some glass on it next week. I can’t wait to see this one finished. In all my years of working in Stained Glass I’ve yet to see someone do a Spiritual window like this one.
Gerald finished everything but the border on his window this week. It’s tacked and ready for border pieces now so we should see it completely assembled next week. The flowers near the lower left came out looking great if you ask me. I was a little concerned since they were too small to try to give any detail to. Obviously I was worried about nothing. The next panel Gerald does will be more complex than this one but not nearly as complex as the 1st panel in this series.
And that about wraps it up for this week. Come back and visit again to see what happens with our next round of classes.