See the rest of this series here.

Things are getting underway in my stained glass class — today, we were supposed to come in with a pattern ready to go. After a lot of thought and Googling, I settled on making a stained glass TV. Here’s the pattern I ended up with today:

Well? Does it look like a TV? It should look less like a microwave when all the colors are in place. You can see I’ve labeled each piece with its own number and the color it will be. It came out to 11 colors, which is a lot for only 26 pieces.

I was inspired by this panel featured on several blogs a couple years ago. It’s the classic test pattern for color TVs:

Tiffany suggested finding a secondhand TV to mount such a panel in, which would have been really cool. I couldn’t find one in time, though, so instead I crafted a vaguely old-timey one using my still-developing drawing skills and put the test pattern in there. You’ll notice I took some artistic liberties in eliminating the third row and changing the second row to only six squares.

My final pattern is pretty much what I brought to class, traced onto vellum drafting paper. I’ll make one copy for constructing the panel, and cut up the vellum to use in cutting and grinding the glass.

Next week, it’s time for cutting glass! I need to go out and get some, and Jimmy made some suggestions for colors, which I think will be the hardest part in replicating the pattern we all know. He mentioned that the magenta — the fifth bar from the left, which looks more like maroon above — will be difficult to find, but recommended the right color to look for. I’ll let you know what I find.

— George