Firstly, thank you so much for stumbling into my little slice of the internet!
My name is Ashton Harmon, stained glass artist and owner of Floating Color Stained Glass based in North Carolina. I have been creating stained glass works part time since 2019 after taking a one day beginners class while on vacation with my mom in Virginia at a shop called The Glass Peacock. I knew I was going to be hooked on this magical art form the moment I walked into the shop. Within a few months of taking the class I had gathered the basic supplies and got to work on patterns and gifts for family and friends so that I could keep practicing and sharpening my skills.
Fast forward to March 2023, I had established an Etsy shop, switched over to my own website, participated in an in person art market, and started putting more time into my Instagram account. And it is through Instagram that I met the wonderful Korina Oswald!
This is the picture that Korina took of my patch when she shared them all on her Instagram! If you click her linked name above, it will take you directly to her Instagram. You can look at all the patches and who the artists are there!
I was just scrolling on my feed one day and saw a call to other Glass artist to participate in a community stained glass project called #TheGlassQuilt. Korina's vision was to help reduce glass waste and have artists use their scrap glass to create a small square patch, it could just be made up of random shapes, or it could be creating designs, unique to each artist, using leftover glass from other pieces. I absolutely loved this idea when I saw the original post explaining her vision. Creating less waste in this art form has always been important to me, and I thought it was such a unique and fun idea to create a, essentially unknown sized, piece with other artists that without social media, we would've never met or "worked" with each other.
A handful of other artists had already started working on their patches, and seeing what they were doing made me think that there is no way my work would hold its own next to these other artists. I think I ended up debating with myself for a week or two before finally reaching out and asking if I could be part of this project. I think all artist have that bit of self doubt, or harsher self-criticism when working with other artists, or even just comparing their work to others work, but I am so glad that I took the leap and participated in this project!
These are some pictures that Korina shared in some of her first posts about the project. Showing the frames/shape and size each patch would be above, her fitting her pieces into the frame while foiling, and finally her finished patch! (Thanks for letting me use these Korina!)
Once I had committed to joining the glass quilt, I took to Instagram and put a poll in my stories of which of my designs I should try to adapt to be worked into the small rounded square shape. At the time I had been working on some custom snails, I had a variety of snails that were listed on my website, and had sold a few snails in markets, so I was glad when that was the overall winner! So the only thing left to do was adapt my pattern to fit the set shape that Korina came up with and pick out some scraps to use!
I knew one scrap of glass that I had just made another piece with that I really wanted to use. A dreamy multicolored mouth blown / handmade sheet of glass from the highly esteemed Fremont Glass. And I quickly found another scrap, that I had just finished working with from a commission piece, and they went beautifully together! I knew this would be my baby snails body...
Next I chose a scrap for the snails shell that also complemented the multicolored glass and decided on a clear textured glass for the background. The next day, thankfully it was a Saturday, I got to work and started cutting out my pattern pieces! The photo below on the left shows how glass looks when it's first cut. The pieces for the most part never fit together perfectly and it looks quite rough... But that brings us to the next phase of the process grinding! (Secretly my least favorite part of the process) but it's how you get nice smooth edges on all of your glass pieces and make it so they fit snuggly together. 
Up next I had to use copper foil and wrap the edges of each piece and make sure that the foil was adhered really well. This foil along with a binding agent called flux is what allows the solder, or metal, to bind the pieces together to create a suncatcher or window.
And now we have come to one of the final steps in the stained glass process, but it is the final step of our glass patch as we will not be using a patina to change the color of the solder or using polish on it so that way it's easier once Korina received the patches back to solder them all together... Soldering! I also opted to add some wire detail on the shell since I decided to keep it as one piece instead of three pieces like my original design.
And there it was, a finished patch of a baby snail ready to send off to Korina to join 165 other artists work!
I just wanted to add in a little thank you to Korina. Not imagining that the community project could end up being this big with a simple idea and thinking just a handful of artists would join in is not an easy task! She has remained organized and motivated and positive throughout the completion of The Glass Quilt! I'm so thankful and grateful to be part of this community project. Lot of glass artists and even non-Glass artists have helped by sending her supplies to assemble all of the patches together, those who are able to have traveled to help Korina in person to assemble the quilt, and it really is from start to finish a community of Glass artist coming together to get this project completed.
Not only did she initially take on the feet of receiving the patches back and planning to solder them all together, she has been a photographer extraordinaire, sharing everyone's patches as she got them back in the mail, communicating and keeping all of the artists and our Instagram followings up-to-date on how the quilt is moving along, etc. She has been an absolute rockstar in my book!
I will be adding in more stats as the quilt is completed and Korina shares the final of hours and supplies, etc. that it is taken to create this project!