Stained Glass Quilts

Stained glass quilt I made in 2007.

In the fall I decided to contact www.quiltcampus.com about teaching an online course.  According to their website, QuiltCampus

"is an online campus where you can take a variety of classes from quilt teachers, meet quilt students, share experiences, ask questions, and share photos of class projects - all from the comfort of home. Our teachers and students come from all over the world. Taking classes online is easy and fun and one of the bonuses is the people you will meet.

Online classes are similar to correspondence courses, but with a twist - you can converse with the teacher and with other students through a forum!" (www.quiltcampus.com/about).

 I've been interested in teaching quilting since I gave a presentation for my local quilt guild, the Cotton Quilters Guild.  I am already a high school teacher with 20 years of experience, so it should be an easy jump from teaching English to teaching quilting.  After applying for a teaching position and discussing
their needs, I believe QuiltCampus (QC) to be a good fit for me.  They've since asked me to teach the process for making a stained glass quilt.  I had to delay the course, however, when mom became so sick.  The staff at QC was very understanding and suggested that I take all the time I need to mourn her loss.   Feeling that I now need to keep busy and be creative, I decided to work on a stained glass quilt to decide whether or not the idea in my head will work for this course.  Once the quilt is completed, I'll send photos of it to QC, and they will decide whether its something that will be of interest to their students.  Then comes the fun part, designing and writing the course.  Everything is sent to QC and they put the course online and do all the technical work.  I promise to be available to discuss the pattern, directions, etc. with students on certain days through either a forum or email.  Since I'm now teaching a dual enrollment English class through videoconferencing at work, this will prove to be an interesting addition to my teaching experience.

Stained Glass quilt I made for a church raffle in 2008.

In preparing to make this quilt, I've been looking at photos of stained glass in my fine arts books and online.  I've also spent maybe just a little too much time really analyzing the windows while at mass.  I have made a couple of stained glass quilts, and understand the basic idea of how they are constructed.  I have a plan for stippling the quilt before adding the black "leading" in the hopes that this will stabilize the quilt and keep it from being too loose.  The quilt I started today is almost there....I've placed the fabrics and begin the stippling.  Once that is completed, I'll add the black bias for the leading and then bind the quilt.  We'll see how well this works.  I'll keep you posted.