In The Beginning

     Yesterday we drove up to Northwest Art Glass in Redmond to buy supplies. For the record, if someone asks me if I would rather go to Disney World or back to the glass warehouse, glass wins hands down!  Isle after isle, rack after rack, with the most gorgeous glass I have ever seen. I had a list of what I needed and Matt, the glass king, made finding everything so easy. In an hour I had piled up 32 sheets of glass, 25 lbs of solder, copper foil, zinc came and a variety of other supplies.
     It's a 3 1/2 hour trip each way.  We were back on the freeway headed home by 1:00 p.m.  And except for that little part where we headed northbound I5 instead of southbound (the sign for Vancouver B.C. was a clue) it was an easy trip.
     I owe a very special thank you to Debbie Patana of Inspirations Glass in Chinook. She made it possible for me to purchase glass at Northwest Art Glass and I am so very grateful. She has been very generous with her time and knowledge as well.
     We were expecting heavy rain this afternoon, so first thing this morning, we unloaded the truck. Every time Ed lifted a piece down to me, I was struck by the beauty of the colors in each one. We stacked them in the garage, as they were too big to go in my glass rack.
     This afternoon I started piecing together the pattern for the Holy Spirit As A Dove window. I usually make my own patterns, but I just couldn't get what I wanted down on paper. Finally I saw a pattern for sale through Gospel Glass that had all the elements I was looking for. Why reinvent the wheel?  I purchased the pattern.
     I use a program called Rapid Resizer to enlarge my patterns. It prints out the pattern to the desired size in tiles, then I tape the tiles together to make the whole. Excluding the borders, the image is 67"x67". I went through four rolls of sticky tape. I print the pattern in mirror image so that when the window is finished, any textured glass will be on the viewing side. The glass is cut on the smoothest side.
     Finally I had the entire image taped together. After that I worked on plotting out the border, which will be the same for all four of the windows.