Cooking Commando

Let's start this week by returning to our ruler and looking at dividing our inch in half.  The longest line on our ruler diagram below denotes the half inch mark.  I've gone ahead and marked it with a red arrow.  There is only one half inch mark in any span of one inch.  We arrive at the half inch by simply dividing the inch up into two equal pieces.  Let's make a quick analogy here and compare one inch to a dollar.  Half of a dollar would be 50 cents otherwise known as a half dollar.  Two half inches make one inch the same way that two fifty cent pieces equals one dollar.  Easy, right?

When we divide the two half inch sections in half we find ourselves at the next longest lines on the ruler (marked with blue arrows).  We call these quarter inches.  There are four quarter inches in every inch.  This works the same way when we look at our dollar analogy because there are four quarters in a dollar. The first blue arrow points at a quarter of an inch (1/4) while the second blue arrow points at the three quarters of an inch mark (3/4).  The red arrow points at the two quarters of an inch mark which is more commonly known as a half inch.  Using our money analogy again we see that two quarters equals fifty cents or a half dollar.  Again, easy!

 

This isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be. You should now understand sixteenths of an inch, quarters of an inch, and half inches.  Next week we'll cover the our last measurement, the eighth inch.

Now onto the projects that our students are working on.  Gale completed her Saints Fleur De Lis Window and the border worked out perfectly.  This triple border wasn't nearly as difficult as her last one was but the end result matches the window perfectly.

Terry completed this window based on her own pattern of a Humming Bird and Fuchsia which  in turn perfectly matches the Cardinal Window that she made just a few weeks ago.  The borders and sizes are identical which make these a lovely pair of windows.

 

Betty completed her Cross Window and her newest Geometric Bevel design as well.  Betty never shows up with less that four projects in tow so she's generally good for one or two completed projects a week.  In fact, she also made a simple cross suncatcher as well but my picture came out a bit blurry so I can't show you that one.

 

Cindy finished the last of her suncatchers this week wrapping things up with this beautiful Humming Bird in a Circle as well as a wonderful oval Water Lilly scene.  Cindy came in to class with the patterns already drawn which means that I never had to place a pencil to paper for her to complete these suncatchers.  Nice!

 

Carol finished another Star/Geometric Nightlight this week but added a border to this one to make it a bit more fancy than her first one was.

And Ann finished her abstract Orange and Red Cross and has become quite good at making these.  And her beading of the lead around the outside edge was perfection.  One drop per touch always makes a perfect bead which makes your finished project far more secure than a simple tinning of the edge.

 
Susan finished this beautiful Pair of Pumpkin Lawn Ornaments, one large and one small.  Again, she did it all herself including the wire work.  It's always nice to see something go out the door that I didn't touch up or add hooks to because it means that a student has truly learned something.  Great job!
 

Brenda resumed work on her Tiger Stripe De Lis window which she'd been working on at home as well.  She would have had this ready for foiling but she had to re-cut a lot of the bottom purple pieces because she had cut them out of the wrong glass.  That's a problem that can happen when you are working with two pieces of glass that are the same color with the only difference between them being the texture (which is found on the back side of the glass.)  I've been there and done that myself.  But Brenda persevered and she'll be adding a background to this before you know it.

 

Becky S has been hard at work making three 3D Roses.  There are actually only four different pattern pieces in the Rose Pattern but each are repeated either three or five times each.  Putting these together is always fun and I think Becky will enjoy constructing these when she returns.

Charlie came in and brought his wife along with him as well.  Natalia helped him cut glass but more importantly she helped picked out the colors for the two large Bird of Paradise windows that they are making.  They're doing great with the color selection AND the cutting as well.  Cutting both of these windows out at the same time ensures that the glass will match perfectly between the two windows. and that the work remains consistent.

 

Bonnie got all of her Winged Heart ground, wrapped and tacked together this week.  She's taken it home to solder and during the week while I was writing this she brought it back to the shop feeling that it's safer there than it would be at her house were her grandchildren were running around this weekend.  It's actually finished now but I won't show you that until next week (and that's a promise.)

 

Ann saw Becky B's Horseshoe Cross pattern while it was pinned to the wall and fell in love with the design.  She said she'd be making one after she completed her Fleur De Lis Window but she ended up making her red and orange cross (up above) first.  This week she's started the horseshoe pattern but she dropped the fifth horseshoe turning the cross into a geometrical design instead.  And as you can see, she's moving right along on it.

 

Rowena is working on another Fleur De Lis and since she tackled an oval shaped window just a few weeks earlier she's decided to do something different this time and place it in an octagon.  Those are tricky also, but not nearly as difficult as an oval.  It's hard to cheat on curves but you can always use a ruler for straight lines.  And as you can see Rowena had no problems at all.

Gale took one look at Ann's Horseshoe Cross design and decided she wanted needed to make one of her own but in the five section cross variety.  She even tried to match Ann's colors as closely as possible because she thinks Ann has GREAT taste.  :-)

 

Carol also came in with small Fleur De Lis of her own cut out and then added two borders to it.  She said 'NO' when asked if she wanted to frame it in an oval so the background and those borders that you see below went on pretty quickly.  In fact, the only thing left to do is solder this and it will be fit for hanging.

  

The Cross De Lis that Myrt is working on is rapidly nearing completion.  She's got the majority of this ground now and I don't think it will take her much longer before she gets to the background of this project.  The glass she's using may look a little dark while it's sitting there on the table but it lights up a beautiful shade of purple.  This will be anything but a dark once it's hanging up.

 

Then there's Martha who is battling a problem with crabs.  She's just one large crab body away from finishing the two crabs on the left of her Seafood Medley Window but she's run out of glass.  That's okay though because she has a long way to go before she actually requires it so next week she'll simply work on another section of the window.  Terry believes that she may have a piece of the glass that Martha needs but if she doesn't we'll just throw a sheet onto our next order.

 

 

Linda L has begun working on her next seasonal projects and those are three Santa Claus windows.  She's stacking the pieces up three high and managed to get a LOT of work done in class.  In fact, I can see her getting quicker and quicker with each passing week.  What makes me happy is that not only is she gaining speed but she's becoming more precise with her cutting as well. These pieces aren't even ground yet and they fit together nicely.  There's a good reason we ask our students to cut the line off while we're cutting their glass.  Grinding these Santa's will go quickly for Linda.

 

And Mary Grace began work on this  large Holly suncatcher this week.  She's got the leaves all under control and will work on the top ribbon and stem section when she comes back in.  She's been grinding as she's cutting which means that she needs to be extra careful when cutting the remaining pieces since she now has no margin for error.

 

Susan 's version of the Tiger Window is all fitted together and she's taken it  home to hopefully wrap.  She's also been experimenting with her kiln and making some hefty progress there as well.  Susan's been planning this window for quite some time and it looks as though she'll be finishing this up within  two or three weeks because the hard part of making this window is now far behind her.

  

Meanwhile, Jeanne  is making her Tiger Window exclusively from cathedral glasses and she got the majority of her background cut and ground this week.  She cut out what she could from one sheet of krinkle glass and will fill in the few remaining pieces next week once these are all tacked together.  Doing it this way helps maintain a perfectly square window.

 

Betty came in with her baroque background all ground and tacked together for her latest Fleur De Lis Window and then concentrated on pick out out a color for her border.  Solid black made the window too dark but it was the only color that worked for this window so she separated it with a thin clear border first.  It certainly looks like it was a wise decision to me.

 

Paula's Hurricanes Logo Window  is another project that is nearly finished.  With the six background pieces  cut out and only needing to be ground I think I can safely predict that Paula will begin working on the letters that spell out the word 'Hurricanes' when she comes back in.  I doubt the lettering will be a problem at all for her and, of course, there's a trick to letters that will be revealed when Paula returns.

 

Shelley has an awful lot going on in her life right now and when she forgot to bring in her glass she just skipped working on the border and went straight to the soldering process.  Since this window isn't completely cut out she can only solder the front side but there's a lot of front side to her Aquatic Window so Shelley was able to keep busy.  She's doing a great job and next week we hope to add border(s) and the fill in pieces.

 

Jeannette has the majority of work done on her  Pigeon House Window.  All that's left to do is add the  channel, do a little wire work, and then add the windows. We didn't want to cut the windows into the glass because it would have added too many distracting lead lines.  Instead, we are going to tack them to the panel afterward.  And you'll see how that looks next week.

 

I'm thrilled to report that Cindy has begun working on a large window this week thus marking the end of her suncatcher days (for a while anyways).   Her show was this weekend and she certainly had a lot made for it.  I hope that when she returns she gets to tell us that she sold every piece of her stained glass!  This week she began working on a Tiger Eye De Lis window that we haven't seen made in a long time.  It was nice when she showed me the picture of what she wanted to do next because I got to say, "We already have a pattern for that!"

And for some reason I  didn't have a picture of Sue's progress on her LSU Window.  It's all tacked together and her green corners are in place but I guess that during the rush of everyone trying to carry projects and tools out to their cars I somehow managed to miss taking a picture of her window.  But fear not because you'll see that completed next week.

And that about does it here.  Next week we'll see a slew of new projects and cover 8th's of an inch.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks