Homage to Baltimore

Usually I design a new piece of stained glass by drawing a lot, getting frustrated, whining, and playing with glass color combos. This time around, I built the piece earlier than I usually do, since I had limited colors to work with anyway! Most of the stock is at the other studio, but I didn't feel like traveling up there, since I had a class this week in Maryland.

The red roses have an orange cast to them- these are yellow red rather than the grossly named pigeon's blood red. So that meant that most of the colors would have to be in the yellow family in order not to clash.

Baltimore Album Quilt Blocks have several characteristics in common. The designs are often of floral wreaths, baskets and urns of flowers and fruit. The background is usually white. . The flowers are more often red and yellow rather than blue and purples. Of course there's lots of green from the leaves.

So I was pretty set- I used a mus tardy caramel for the basket, indicating the different surfaces by using wispy and textured glass. I had to be careful and select yellow green rather than my usual Kelly or teal greens.

As the red roses are very thick- about 3.8 of an inch in the center, I needed another , thinner element to bridge the visual gap between the roses and the rest of the glass. Without the bright yellow nuggets, the roses would have overpowered the design.

I thought about a white background for the entire square, but this resulted in a static piece. In a fabric quilt, the quilting lines themselves add visual interest to the plain white background. I had some clear swirled glass around that gave me the same unobtrusive texture that fine quilted lines gives to fabric.

I've never seen an album quilt with the elements set on point in a Diamond-in-Square format, much less then sashed in red. But I have seen some with red sashing. So this is really my design variant entirely. Hope you like Homage to Baltimore

Finally Figured Out How To Do This!

So here I am , the less Techno savvy partner in Glass on the Square, the shared stained glass studio I belong to . Since I finally figured out how to do this, I can update everyone without having to learn HTML. We do have a real website, Glassonthesquare.com, of course, but that is for more serious things, like show schedules and new offerings.This is just me, what I'm working on now and , well what frustrates me. So here goes, full speed and ignore that lovely churning white water ....

For the last 2 years or so, Di and I have been re interpreting traditional quilt blocks into glass. Which sounds pretty easy and is not.

Glass is NOT fabric- it does not stretch, it does not fold, it does not come in as many colors, and most of all- glass breaks! I hesitate to remember some of my debacles.

Mostly we have been working on straight forward, geometric pieces. We've done variations on Log Cabins, Flying Geese, Dutchman's Puzzle, Baby Blocks and the like. We had always thought to work on other , less geometric pieces. Di wants to do a series based on Little Red Schoolhouse and I've been dying to make something based on Baltimore Album quilts.

2 weeks ago, I found 1 1/14 inch molded red roses in a little store in New Jersey. They were perfect for the quilt square I had had in mid for a while. I finally got my cutter in gear and the result is above.

Not too shabby for a working draft, if I say so myself!