Making glass quilts

I'm taking fused glass class at Visual Arts again this session. We are so fortunate to have a facility like VisArts (formerly The Hand Workshop) in Richmond. The studio spaces are so nice and the classes cover everything from painting to letterpress to weaving to glass. I like taking the advanced glass class mostly because it gets me back to working on glass. We all work on our own projects but there's help whenever you need. Some of the people have been taking this class every session for 6 years! It's inspiring to see what everyone else is making.

My current interest is in quilt blocks. I like making these sun catchers and it's very good practice for cutting glass.....something that I'm still not great at!
​I cut out the pieces for this and one other quilt last week and fired this one over the weekend. I love red and gray so this one might be a keeper! I still have to add the hanging chain but otherwise it's done.

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Here's what the kiln looked like before firing. My kiln has a round shelf and it's not a huge kiln so I can only do one big quilt block in a firing. But I can't stand to fire the kiln with just one item so I try to fill the shelf as much as possible.
​I added in some 4" square pinwheel blocks (pay attention to the colors of the red pinwheels) and experimented with some Christmas ornaments. The ornaments are a great way to experiment with different colors/materials/techniques. It's also a great use of scrap glass.

​Yes, even glassmaking creates scrap bins!

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Here are all of the little Christmas trees. They are about 4" tall. Some are definitely better than others but they all turned out pretty cute.

Here are the 4" pinwheel blocks. Did you notice that the orange isn't orange before firing? Some glass, especially reds, oranges and yellows "strike" to a different color. That causes problems when you don't organize your scrap glass well (like me). Sometimes I get surprised and not in a good way.

​I also experimented with top vs corner hangers. I thought the 4: block might be too big for a corner hanger, but it isn't.

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Here are my next projects. I'm gluing up a Card Trick block in turquoise. The blue circles are just bottle caps that I'm using as risers and not by bad design sense. The first block into the kiln is another in reds and yellows and some more test ornament blocks.

​I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get these finished and fired. I try not to impose deadlines with my glass projects. They will be done when they are done.....like my wall!