Wow, this blog has a layer of dust on it an inch thick...

All I can say is that I'm really quite embarrassed that I've let this blog fall to the wayside. The time has come to pick it back up and blow the dust off of it.

Let's see, where did we leave off? Oh, the stained glass quilt panel. There's a few more steps involved in order to get it done. It really turned out to be one of my favorite pieces, the colors are really gentle and compliment each other nicely.

I'll dig up the pictures and get the rest of the steps listed soon.

New glass panel--Day 4, cutting the border

Another great tool that I'm so lucky to own is a strip cutter.

Its a glass cutter with a ruler and a base combined together. The cutter can be set to increments on the ruler depending on the width of glass desired. The base rides on a surface higher than my cutting surface and scores the glass in a nice even line.

Then the glass pieces are broke apart from each other. Next, I'll need to fit the border pieces to the original design. I've chosen to have a 1" border in the same pale green color that is in the body of the panel but in a different texture. The border texture is called rough rolled and it is translucent with a slightly rippled texture. For the corners I've decided to use 1" square clear glass bevels.

In the next few days I'll go to the next step in this project--foiling the glass pieces.

Shown: strip cutter, fitting the border to the body of the panel.

New glass panel-Day 4

Finally we are going to get to the glass grinder. Its a great tool. There's a flat grid surface with a water basin beneath. The grids allow crud from grinding to fall into the water pool. There's a motor in the base that turns a diamond coated grinder head/bit which smooths down the uneven surfaces of our mishapen glass pieces to allow them to fit tightly. A sponge sits behind the grinder head and wicks water up to the surface to cool the glass and provides lubrication to insure a smooth finish.

So, I always start in the center and work outwards. Each glass piece surface is grinded smooth to follow the paper pattern that's been glued to it. Then, I'll soak the glass piece in water to release the paper, dry it off and see how it fits onto the working design.

Now that we have the body of the piece done we'll go ahead and cut the border.

Shown: glass grinder, fitting the glass pieces onto the original

New glass panel--day 3

I've let the pattern pieces dry overnight. The next morning I've gone back out to the shop to begin cutting the pieces apart.

Cutting is really not the right word, what's happening is the glass is being scored. I use a pistol grip glass cutter that has a built in oil reservoir to lubricate the surface while in use. There is a wheel on the end. The wheel of the cutter plows a fissure in the glass surface, weakening the surface along that line. This is scoring. Next, pressure is applied and the glass breaks along the score line. But, I like the word cut so that's what I will call it.

So, each glass piece for the panel is cut following the glued down paper pattern piece getting as close to the paper all possible without gouging it. Too much excess isn't good either--I'll spend the rest of next week at the grinder!! And you can see that once all the glass pieces are assembled onto the working design, they don't quite fit right. There are excess edges here and there where neighboring pieces are not fitting close. The glass pieces need to be like loving partners with the next piece. So, we need to get all of these glass pieces to the glass grinder....this is a lot of fun!!

Shown: pistol grip cutter with glass piece, all the pieces of the body of the panel together, close up of glass pieces.