Friday Roundup #4-20 – Stained Glass

I was planning on writing a separate post for the Stained Glass workshop, but towards the end of the day I felt the onset of flu symptoms. I just wasn’t up to it or in the mood to concentrate.

This case of it is a doozie and I am blaming my trip to the big smoke and all the germs that settle on surfaces and close contact on the London Tube. Urgh! I am still feeling the effects, but more in the sneezy/cough, which just brings you down and makes you feel tired. My bedside table looks like a pharmacy! I have self-quarantined myself to the spare room at night, to avoid disturbing the other half or passing this on.

Anyway, enough about illness. Let’s crack on with the Stained Glass, as that’s all I have done this past week. I have made my usual little video of stills, which you can find at the end of the post.

I must say, that this was thoroughly enjoyable and the day went by quite quickly. We started at 10 am and went on until 5 pm, with a 30 minute break for lunch. Following some safety talk about handling glass and explanations about the tools we would or might use, we were shown how to cut glass freehand, using 2mm thick picture glass. Picture glass, being slightly thinner requires less pressure to score and then break, and so it is great for practice, plus they get it free as occurs from a framer. Top Tip!

After this, we moved on to 3mm thick glass and practiced scoring this in straight lines and curves. This was a little more challenging as you need to keep the marker line on one side of the cut, essentially the black line will be on the waste glass, as you cut inside the line. My effort was ok, but not perfect.

Next up, we moved on to selecting the pattern we would work with and the glass we want to use. I love this selection process as there is such a range of colours, textures and patterns from which to choose. I had selected a coastal headland scene, so I was limiting my choice to greens, blues, yellows and gold/browns.

Once we had all selected our glass, we moved on to cutting. Throughout the workshop, we had mini teaching sessions regarding the next step of the process.

I only made one error on my first cut. There was a little indent along my cut line. And when I got to that, the scoring went off and the break didn’t go cleanly. So I had to cut agin, but in my haste I put my pattern in a reverse position, so the rest of my pieces had to be cut the same way. It worked out in the end.

When we got to the edging, I went to find something with some opacity to show off the pattern glass and my eyes immediately spotted the white. It’s called Baroque and it was just gorgeous. I would have happily just framed that sheet of glass. It reminds me of frost patterns or feather in ice. I wish I had taken a picture of the whole piece.

Here is the video.

I really enjoyed the day and am pleased with the finished result. My soldering needs work as there are some overly thick sections on the curves. But overall, it came out well.

Hope you all have a great weekend.