Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Stained glass fabric

Our local church is built high in the Ozarks overlooking a beautiful valley so we have clear glass windows. However, for Christmas we wanted to add a sense of "sanctuary" with stained glass windows. Rather than make them of glass, which would have been expensive and permanent, I thought we could try fabric instead. Sunlight shines beautifully through and for Christmas eve, the dimmer inside lights will illuminate the fabric better than glass.

The base panel is black flannel (which turns out to be very hard to cut all those little spaces out of) with patterned fabric (printed tone on tone) for the "windows"

Although it isn't "high church" the design is influenced by traditional windows. The face of Jesus in the center is just a placeholder for now.

Almost a year later....


Its been almost a year since the last post and I've hardly bound a book (did do 2 small ones last night) but I've been preoccupied with architecture again. This is a plan for a small guest house on our property or elsewhere. Mom talked about building a little place for her but she wasn't so keen on the curve of the roof.




It would be good to have good foam insulation (http://www.tigerfoam.com/) and I found a great deal on the shell at Steel Master (http://www.steelmasterusa.com/). Also, this isn't exactly a new idea. I found an article on the history of quonset huts here: http://www.quonsethuts.org/huts/index.htm and an in-depth survey reports of quonsets in Fort Collins, CO. http://www.historitecture.com/projects/quonsethuts.html .



I think most of the historic ones look pretty sad, like the neighbors would throw rocks at your kids if you lived there, but if it looked cool like the Hummer dealership it would be ok. Southern living also featured an article about one that was converted into a really cool house.