Monday, March 25, 2013

The Glass Quilt

[The completed article--the first I've written for the online paper, the Twin Cities Daily Planet (no lie):
"Embedded: With the Mosaic Quilting Project" ]
This is a bit of the blurb I volunteered to write about this local mosaic project:  
More than 300 pairs of hands, six months of workshops, and countless little pieces of glass... and another community mosaic is ready to go up in Minneapolis.
The ten "glass quilt" panels will be mounted on the outside walls of the MLK Park building. Each of the 4" x 4' designs is based on traditional quilt and textile designs from different cultures.

A slideshow will illustrate some of the 1,500 hours volunteers spent cutting and pasting glass pieces into patterns. Volunteers ranged in age from 2 to 96 years old.


ABOVE:
1. One glass bead waiting to be cut and and glued into a southern African pattern. 
Thin set mortar will hold the mesh onto a backing board. 

2. Volunteers smear grout on top of the mosaic to fill the spaces between the glass pieces, then wipe the sticky gritty stuff off.

3. The final buff with old T-shirts reveals the completed pattern.

2 comments:

femminismo said...

Love all these posts. I got as far as your father and then I had to stop. Back to work! Rita Hayworth was the most gorgeous woman ever! When I was young (very) I stood close to a visitor to our small community. She was the date of the richest boy in town. (Rich, back in the late 50s, was all relative to me. They had a color TV.) She looked like Rita and I was in awe to just be in the same room. I've often wondered if she ended up on his arm for any length of time. :)

Fresca said...

Hey, thanks, F'ismo:
it's nice to see you again!
I've been away from blogging--and writing in general--a long time.

Yeah, I gotta say, Rita H. is even more beautiful than Bill Shatner.