Mardi Gras Week (Up To Date Again!)
When you are working with glass a few broken pieces are to be expected along the way. But sometimes things happen and the next thing you know you’re re-cutting pieces that have already been cut and ground. Such is the case with Grace this week. She was on her way to her car with the window that she ground at home during the week when the board it was on broke. The next thing she knew she was picking up all her pieces off the floor. When she got to class she put it all back together and surveyed the damage — There were about 20 broken pieces in all. But she buckled down, dug out the pattern pieces and had everything re-cut before she left. Even though it isn’t completely ground you can see how nice this window is turning out. At least the pieces that broke weren’t wrapped or even soldered together. I once had the top piece of a freshly soldered window come loose and watched in horror as it smashed into a thousand pieces. Only one piece was saved on that job. My hat goes off to Grace for keeping her cool and not getting all bent out of shape (when she had every right to!)
Janice was hoping to have all her corners ground but ended up being called in to work on her day off which meant that she ground her corners during class this week. Before she started I stressed how important it was that she make all her curves fluid and graceful by eliminating any rough areas and rounding out anything even remotely out of the lines. And Janice did WONDERFULLY! All her corners are ground and they all flow smoothly. Here’s one of the four she completed this week. Next week she’ll begin the center Fluer De Lis.
Mary Lynn did some minor redesign work on her window. We had added a butterfly to the original flower design but we changed the butterfly to a side view this week (the pattern she’s doing is on the left). After that was finished she began cutting glass and managed to knock out all of the hardest sections of her window– the letters and numbers. It’s looking good already…
Joey started by cutting the Orange and White sections of his window. We laughed about how he managed to get 2 of his colors completely cut out in under 10 minutes but it’s no laughing matter that he managed to cut out all of his blue glass as well. And trust me when I say that there’s a lot of blue pieces in it. He’s only got the yellow letters left to do next week and then he’ll be grinding.
Gerald has all of his window cut out! With only two small borders left to go on the top and the bottom, he’ll be soldering this in his next class. I can’t wait to see the three windows all next to each other and that will be soon now.
Winding up this entry is a window I made for someone up in Delaware. I thought it ended up looking very striking and elegant and wanted to give the students who weren’t in this week a chance to see it.
That brings us up to date again.