At the beginning of every beautiful stained glass piece is a carefully designed stained glass patterns. And suprisingly, some people just getting started in stained glass have no clue where to start to find a design to start their project with. Fortunately, it's not hard to find and design and you can use practically anything for a little inspiriration. It just takes a bit of imagination and some drawing paper.
A quick and easy option is to go online and purchase stained glass designs from a glass shop that sells pattern books, but this is an expensive option if you are on a budget. Inspirations for stained glass patterns are everywhere. If you are lacking ideas, just take a walk around your house or outside to look for motivation. You can even borrow from other arts and try something like knitting or quilting patterns, there are literally dozens of free ones that are available online. They can make for a great pattern and sometimes borrowing from another art form can give you something a little different then you get in the same glass pattern books. You might even have some piece of art that is around your house that you might be able to convert into a stained glass piece. The key to a great pattern is something that will be relatively easy to trace and does not have parts that are extremely intricate.
Once you have chosen your subject matter, the next step is to copy it onto tracing paper. If the piece you are tracing has some opacity, a light table will make this job easy. Holding it up to a window is another low-tech method that often works well. When you're done tracing the pattern, you'll need to convert your pattern onto a couple of sheets of heavy paper. I would recommend that you save one of them in a folder so you can always access your previously made patterns. You might be able to give back to the art world by making your free stained glass patterns available to other people that are looking for ideas With your other piece, that will be your actual working design.
Don't get discouraged if you can't find the right design for the project you have in mind. Just take a stroll around your neighborhood for some inspiration and then create your own. It is very rewarding to be able to design your own pattern, then you know that the piece that you eventually will create will be truly unique. You need to keep in mind that a good glass pattern is just as important as all the stained glass supplies that you have in your shop.
