Stained Glass

This was one of the first panels I made - almost like a quilting pattern!  It was fairly easy to cut, and the repetition allowed me to interchange pieces that didn't quite fit perfectly in one spot to another place in the pattern.  This hung in my kitchen window for a couple of years, but has now been moved to my sewing room downstairs.  I love the bright colours shining down onto my sewing table.






This was my next panel: considerably larger, and a LOT more challenging!  I was browsing through books, trying to decide what to do next, and come across this pattern.  It fit perfectly with our living room, and I loved it!  I should have been suspicious when my teacher said "SURE you can do this: you've learned a lot!" (Translation: time to stretch ya a bit.)  The real beauty comes from the glass used for the oak leaves:  it's cut from different parts of a single sheet, and each colour has a different degree of hardness, which made grinding a real challenge.  Rachel had warned me to watch out for soft spots, and I quickly discovered that the white was quite soft.  It's hard to see from this photo, but the clear sections have three different patterns of glass in them too.  This one has been done for well over a year, and I still tremendously enjoy looking at it.  The sunset shines through this window, and it's neat how different the leaves look with those colours shining through.

This "Northern Lights" panel is my most recent completed project, and it now graces the kitchen window over my baking counter.  Our favourite vacation activity is canoe camping in Algonquin or Killarney, and this is a reminder of what we see!  Rachel suggested I use stones for the "shore" at the bottom, and I love the 3D effect.  It also looks great with the stone backsplash around the bottom of the window in which it hangs.
The trees are made of scrap glass:  it took me a lot of time to get the silhouetted trees to fit properly: I ended up soldering the purple trees and the bottom third of the black tree together to save my sanity before cutting the rest.
The sky is not scrap glass!  There are two different kinds of glass in it, one with reddish lights, and the other with blue/green.  The sky changes colour depending on the amount and quality of the light. It almost looks like an entirely different panel at night, because the red "disappears" without light behind it, and that glass looks more golden.  Day or night, I get a lot of enjoyment out of this one.


My current project is my first with lead: it's just nicely underway, but eventually will be a 6 foot long panel in the sidelight of our front door.  It is made of scrap glass culled from my teacher's many boxes (thanks Rachel), and features two Macintosh roses on the inside curves of a long "S" the length of the panel.  At this point it is about half done (i.e. bottom 1/3 and one of the roses). I'd like to have it finished before Christmas - have to see how that goes.