Another Challenge with almost no planning

Back in June, a new challenge was presented to my quilt guild.  This time it was to be a Stained Glass quilt.  Most people immediately thought of the traditional stained glass, using bias tape for the “leading”.

Well, I thought about the challenge for 5-1/2 months and then finally had a couple of ideas.  I could remember two photos from some of our trips.  The first was of a window in St. Giles Church in Edinburgh, Scotland…..

I loved the colors and using squares, but really didn’t want to make it this structured.

The second photo was taken at Notre Dame in Paris…..

I liked all of the leading and particularly the horizontal lines.

So, with those two photos in my mind, I headed up to my studio and started pulling out jewel tone fabrics that were already cut into 2-1/2 squares….

I put a piece of black fabric on my design wall and started randomly adding squares  and rectangles of color…..

After I had filled the “window’’ up…..

….I had to figure out a way to get all of the pieces off of my wall, backed with wonder under and then replaced on the background.   After thinking about it for a while, I decided to cut strips of wonder under that were just a bit wider than 2-1/2 inches and lay the pieces on it one row at a time…..

I trimmed them by hand, wanting there to be slight variations in the edges.

At this point, Michael thought that I could stop,  but I wanted to go ahead and turn it into a window.

The next task was to figure out the curve and start working on the sides of the window.

After I had cut and placed the inner border of the window I realized that I had a big problem….

Do you see it???    As I walked forward with my iron to fuse the first window border in place, I realized that I was about to fuse it directly onto my design wall!!   I guess that is what comes from not planning first!!

I started to add more fabric but didn’t really want it to get too much more bulk so finally decided to fuse directly onto the batting.   I ironed the black fabric onto the fusible batting and then fused the window frames in place….

I cut it out and used a Fabrico marker to add the “mortar” between the bricks making up the window frame…..

I quilted on each side of the “mortar” which gave it a nice definition and then started quilting straights lines horizontally across the stained glass.

The dark grey binding finished off the window nicely…..

With two hours to spare, I finished up the last of the binding and headed for the meeting. 

So, for the second time in one week, I made a project with very little pre-planning.  I know, who am I and what have I done with Frances Arnold!!!