Glass Weaving

On my last trip to the glass store to purchase some supplies, I had time to wonder around as my order was being packaged and totalled. I found a slumping mold that I wanted to try.

The lady helping me confirmed the mold was for glass weaving and I purchased it. I decided to give this new process a try, using red and green transparent glass. My goal was to create a Christmas tree dish.

Let me say I decided to just try what I 'thought' would work on my trial project rather than look for a video or any instructions. This turned out the be right and wrong, but helped me discover where creativity ended and technical know how began. This picture on the right shows the green strips I cut and placed on the slumping mold.

I decided to use the red for the alternating weaving direction and, after a couple of abortive attempts, I discovered how to make the weaving work. I discovered through my trial and error that the width of the red pieces needed to be slightly different from the green pieces. Also, getting a long, thin red piece required a careful hand and I now have several short small pieces for future projects! My initial weaving -- still with the Christmas tree shape as my goal -- is shown on the left.

After I created enough green strips to finish the tree, I was ready to carefully transfer the weaving project to the kiln and see if my concept and technical process was going to work. So the project was now in the kiln for the third time.

Next week, see how this project progressed.

If there is a particular item, color or design for an object that I springs to mind for you and you want to know if we can create it, get in touch and we will see what we can do. Contact us by emailing here or contact us on Facebook.

Next week: Glass Weaving continued