Lady Shivesa

I have no idea how to make a stained glass quilt, but I would love to make one. Just wanted to comment to say I think what you're doing is AWESOME! DH is a hardcore gamer, so he would really get a kick out of this. I made him a Mario quilted wall hanging for Christmas and he was ecstatic. After a year and a half of being married, I find I am becoming a bit of a 'baby' gamer myself.

To put it succinctly - kudos on this idea!!

annieshane

This past year we did 6 wall hangings for our church. They measure 28X60" and we totally covered. I purchased most of the self-adhesive bias tape on ebay at less than half of what I had to pay in other places. Was really fortunate because that included shipping. Good thing, we used 3-4 rolls on each hanging. Thought I would go broke buying those, would have been worse at $11.00+ a roll times 23 rolls. This is a wonderful project and really does not turn into anything pretty until the "leading" is added. It is amazing what that last touch does for the project! Good luck and do post your projects so we can all enjoy.

QM

3 or 4 years ago my guild had a fake stained glass party. You begin with a stack of vibrantly colored fabrics. I think ours were 12". Many of us traded squares. We were given a piece of freezer paper with a scrappy-crazy pattern. Without a pattern, you could work from the outside in to make your own. Make an extra copy of the pattern, or you may never get it to look right. The pattern is ironed onto the top fabric. It is heavily pinned, then cut with a rotary cutter.

Working from about the center, sew the 3/4" 'lead' strip (not bias, as everything is straight lines) to the center. Press. Take the next pile of pieces. Remove the top piece of the pile. Put it on the bottom. Sew it to the lead. Press. Add a lead piece to another side. Move to the next pile, move the 2 top pieces to the bottom, take the new top piece and sew it to your lead. etc. what you get is a block which may take a bit of trimming, but does give a remarkable effect.

BTW, it occurs to me to add that in sewing, you will do the reverse of the order you used in making the pattern. The first piece you drew and cut will be the last to be sewn. I was smug and thought I didn't need the 2nd copy of the pattern. Boy was I wrong! Also, I dislike pressing, but this is a place where pressing at each step is important . I found that some of my pieces needed a bit of trimming to work.

This is not nearly as interesting as a true stained glass quilt, but it is much easier as a first step.

Flying_V_Goddess

At $11 a roll at regular price wouldn't it be cheaper to make your own?

Flying_V_Goddess

And I still have to figure out which one to start with! I had thought of the green one, but I'm kind of leaning towards the blue one (see video link at start of page to see what I'm talking about). I got a Hancock's of Paducah catalog and saw some gorgeous blue Bali watercolor fabrics.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure what fabric to go for. Was originally going to go with Moda Marbles, but now I'm torn between that and the Bali watercolors.

And I'm debating whether or not I should get the fabric swatch cards to help match the colors. Each window depicts a sage of a particular element (like Saria, the Forest Sage) so there's a lot of the same color in different shades in the same window. I think when I originally started planning this out (before I knew about video capture cards and was literally taking pictures of the TV screen) I had counted about 13 different colors on the Forest Sage window and most of them are green. So I'm wondering if the swatch cards would help match the colors. What's on the computer screen or catalog might not actually match the real color. I hate to entirely base my plans around what I saw on paper or a screen and find when the fabric arrives that they don't match. Even more since each window is going to take up a lot of fabric in different colors.

At least choosing the fabric for the leading will be easy enough! lol

QM

for my uses it does not matter. For yours it might make a big difference.

salmonsweet

Wow, just checked out the video, those windows are awesome. I can see why you'd want to play with those designs!

I buy fabric online a lot, and I tend to buy more variety than I strictly need because IME, screen or paper representations just don't work accurately enough to get reliable matches. With buying a few extra fabrics, I've had some amazing serendipity though. I'd rather have an extra FQ or two than fabric swatches...

Oh and a lot of stores will help with color matching. One person from webfabrics.com worked me over the phone to put together some blues that had to be close to each other but work together. It worked out really well for me in that case. If you find the right person to match your creative vibe for the quilt you want to make, it could be superb.

Flying_V_Goddess

I would just buy some extra colors in case the ones I pick out don't exactly match and then have extra fabric. But for this project that isn't realistic for me. If I bought just one extra fabric for the glass parts each window it would cost an extra $60. With that money I could buy the fabric swatch cards and still have money to spare. Just the glass fabrics are going to run me about $44.90-$89.80 per window...and I don't even want to know the costs of the backing fabric, batting, black fabric for the bias tape, fusible tape, mini iron, thread, freezer paper, and bias tape makers in different sizes.

I'm just going to assume the sheer awesomeness of these wallhangings will completely outweigh the costs to make them.