Many people are very curious about exactly how a stained glass window is made. Aside from cutting the glass with a glass cutter most people have no idea as to what steps are involved in getting a window out to a customer. This page will show you the basics of a window's creation, from design to finish. This page should not be considered to be an instructional course in the art of stained glass creation, but rather a quick guide to the basic steps along the path to a finished window.

Click on any of the following pictures to see them larger.

The first thing we need is a design. This can actually be the toughest part of the whole process. Choosing a design is never easy-- most customers know what they want in a rough sense only. I start with the basics and expand from there. In this case a bayou scene was desired which would include a cypress tree with some cypress knees, some irises and herons. The hopes of finding a pattern pre-drawn with those elements are slim and none so I knew I'd be drawing this one myself. When I design a window I break it down into many smaller elements and work on them one step at a time. Luckily I have a Bayou in my front yard complete with irises, so I went thru some pictures that I had taken the year before and turned up 2 that would serve our purpose. One had a great shot of the cypress tree in front of the house but it had no irises in it. Another picture had a closeup of the irises I needed so I put them both on the computer and cut and pasted together one picture with both elements. I found 2 different pictures of herons and then pasted them into the picture as well. I also blurred the sky and water (eliminating a lot of stray tree branches in the process). This is what I ended up with:

The general idea was then shown to the customer (John) and he liked the basic layout. Now we need to draw it up full sized and add all the detail to get a finished pattern. Not being much of an artist I then printed the compilation out on a paper and set a clear piece of glass on top of it to trace it out into a very rough line drawing. Once I had the basics drawn onto the glass I needed to transfer it to the actual paper pattern that I would build the window on. The finished size of the window would be about 4 foot by 4 foot so I broke my line drawing down into 16 squares that, on their own, are easier to work with (the squares are traced in red):

I drew the 4' x 4' square on a paper and then broke it down into 16 squares also. Drawing the pattern a square at a time allows me to keep things aligned and in perspective. As I said, I am no artist and I cheat every chance I can get. Once I had the basic outline on the paper I began to add the details to it. It's much easier to do this on the full sized pattern rather than a small 8 inch by 8 inch drawing. The first thing I did was to fill in the 2 herons. Next I filled in the trees, followed by the leaves on the bottom of the drawing that make the 'field' of irises.

Now that the pattern was completely fleshed out I could start coloring it to get a good feel for how it would look. I used 4 different greens for the leaves rather than just one. Since the leaves on the bottom of the window fill up a large part of the pattern you want to use a few similar colors as opposed to one lump of solid green. Alternating 4 different greens gives the pattern a more realistic look as well. Note that some of the leaves go in front of our heron. This makes the curved neck easier to cut and gives the window more depth. This is our pattern with most of the lines traced out in black marker and colored in colored pencils.

Next I color the tree and add some more detail. Again, rather than one brown for the tree truck I've colored it in three shades of brown. I've played with the skyline a bit and added detail to the water by adding some lines. The lines allow our leaves to cut into the water without having lead lines running off each leave up into the land. Glass can only be cut in certain ways and your patterns have to take these rules into account. Knowing how to hide lead lines is a key element to making realistic looking patterns.

Next we show our 'finished' pattern to John and see what he thinks. He loves it but wishes we could add some spanish moss and a cat-tail or two. We're able to make these adjustments easily. Now we're ready to start cutting the glass. To do this we need to make a second full sized copy of our finished pattern. We will cut our copy up completely and begin tracing the pattern pieces out onto the glass. Numbering both patterns makes it much easier to reasemble you newly cut glass pieces. As I cut my glass I place each piece on the pattern to get a feel for how things are looking as I move along. If something looks out of the place I will change it before continuing.

I cut the glass for the trees using only 2 shades of brown (remember that I colored it in 3 shades) but I make sure to use the light and dark sections of the glass as if they were 2 different colors. By alternating the light and dark sections I get a subtle contrast effect without adding the price of another sheet of glass to the cost of the window. You can see this shading effect in the picture below. Remember that none of these pieces are ground yet so they don't fit together as perfectly as they will later on.

Rarely do things ever go smoothly during the making of a window. In this case we have no glass for the water yet because it was out of stock. Luckily there's plenty to work on while we're waiting for the blue-green water to arrive. I always work in sections and I don't like to bounce around on the pattern like I had to here by skipping the water and instead finishing the top sky portion of the window. I didn't cut the second heron because I wasn't 100% sure of what it would look like against the glass we have chosen for the water. Rather than cut the bird and discover that it doesn't show well against the water I decided to hold off on cutting him. The water itself is a perfect color and I would rather change the color of the bird than the water if they do not work well together.

All of the glass for this window was hand picked except for the water. Since the glass distributer didn't have any of the blue-green in stock we had them ordered it and then mail it to us when it arrived. Because I physically looked at each piece of glass I was purchasing I knew that I was safe with my colors and that nothing would clash or blend into each other. But the water was a gamble since we didn't get to chose the actual sheet that we would be using. Glass is never the same and when you have a mixed color you need to pay attention to what it looks like as compared to it's sample. The blue-green we picked might come in mostly green or mostly blue rather than an even mix. That's why I like to look at the glass in person rather than purchasing online or mail-order. This way you know what you will be using.

Luckily, our blue-green is perfect! I cut it and then ground each piece of glass to fit perfectly. It took well over a day to wrap all the glass in the copper foil that the lead sticks to. Our next step is soldering the window together and adding the final borders. This is the back side after it's been soldered, washed and colored.

The finished window. Stainded glass is hard to photgraph-- you need light behind it to get the full effect but that's not easy to do while it's being lit from the front also. This is a picture of the finished window as viewed outside in sunlight. As you will see the look will be very different when it's installed and has more light behind it then in front of it.

And finally, the window as seen installed with light behind it. You can see that the window takes on a whole new look when it is illuminated from behind.

I hope this has helped you see what is involved in making a window from start to scratch. It's a very laborous process that is as time consuming as it is rewarding.