My grandmother used to make stained glass until she lost her studio space around the time I was born. Any time I left or returned home, I would see the red roses she made for the front door or the panel of butterflies over the back door. The windows of the room that she had set up as the grandchildren’s play room had clear windows with borders of different colored blocks and three different pieces hang in the kitchen. I always wished that she could teach me, but we never had the opportunity.
As some of you know, I have recently returned from a trip to Iowa and North Carolina (a friend’s wedding was two days before the start of a conference that I had registered for before getting his save-the-date). At that conference, I finally had the opportunity to learn how to make stained glass!
The teachers said that 20-25 pieces of glass would be a reasonable size for a first project to be made in four days and that straight edges would be easier to cut and fit than curved pieces.
Naturally, I designed a project that had forty-nine pieces, all of which were curved.
Twenty hours of work (there may or may not have been one VERY long night in the studio before the last day of class), several bandages, and very careful road trip home, I sent pictures of my finished project to my brothers, on the eighth anniversary of the death of our grandmother, who raised all three of us.
