how to weave glass

In my self taught efforts of learning this fusing stuff I tend to rely on the Internet ALOT, reading others' posts on bulletin boards and blogs has got me through some stuff that I would have not otherwise figured out very quickly. The folks over at warmglass.com are very helpful though, judging from some posts, I can't help but think that some of them might be annoying know-it-alls in real life. But hey, whatever helps is appreciated.

So in honor of all those that have helped me, I thought I would post my own tutorial on something. So sit back, relax and learn how to weave glass.

The first thing you need to do is cut yourself some strips of glass. How thick or thin you want them is up to you. I cut mine about 1/2 inch thick.

Next you need to slump them to ready them for weaving. Molds can be bought for this purpose, but, like me, you can make your own from shelf paper-the thick stuff. I used two layers of 1/8" thick paper. Some people apparently cut up a ceramic tile into strips and use those too. The fiber paper can be reused (or so I am told) once or twice. The tile strips can be reused indefinitely. Whatever you use, the strips need to be a little wider than the strips of glass that will be cross weaved into this set.

Strips of glass laid across fiber paper strips (pre-firing)

Your strips will need to be spaced far enough away from each other to fit the thickness of two of these slumped strips and the width of one of the cross strips. For example if all of your strips are 1/2 inch thick and you are using normal 1/8 inch thick glass, the fiber paper/tile strips will need to be 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/8 in away from each other, or 3/4 inch apart.

Next fire up your kiln to slumping temperature. This is where your own knowledge of your kiln and how it works comes into play. I brought mine up to 1265 F and held it there for 20 minutes. As it turned out I should have gone a little higher.

When you remove your strips from the kiln they will now look like this:

Next you need to alternately flip them over so you have this:

Next take the strips that you are going to cross these with, and slide them through the open spaces as such:

Now you are ready to stick it back in the kiln to fuse them all together. How much you fuse them depends on the look you are trying to achieve. I am going to take this up to a tack fuse (1365 F) so that they flatten out somewhat, but still keep the dimensional woven look. Check back tomorrow for my finished product.

So that's weaving glass.

I have been busy making a couple other things as well:

This is the quilt pattern that I started a while back. It needs to go back in the kiln. I did not fuse fully enough.

This is a "something" that I made yesterday. I drew the doodle for this way back at Guadalupe during some training. I remember sitting next to the superintendent, doodling and clearly not paying attention. I had the checkered glass in mind for this one from the very beginning. I like the way it turned out. I like to incorporate geodes in stained glass when possible. I used to pick them up at the cave gift store, they were pretty reasonably priced. They are often too expensive to buy in bulk, but I am always keeping my eyes open for them and buying them up when I find them at a good price.

There is a stained glass store in El Paso, and when we used to live at Guadalupe I would go there every time I went to El Paso whether or not I needed glass. Hence my large assortment of glass.

Anyways, at one point they thought they were going out of business, so they were having a sale. There were three huge boxes of different clear textured glass scraps (i.e less then a square foot) with a price on them that was something ridiculously cheap like 1.50. I assumed it was a per sq. foot price or per pound, so I started picking out all the cool pieces. Then the lady told me that $1.50 (or whatever it was) was for the whole box. Well, I couldn't pass it up. So I took all three big boxes. Also it was at a time that we were looking to move to another park, so I figured that by buying a whole ton of glass, I would surely find myself faced with the annoying chore of moving it soon, right? I guess it worked because not too much later I was moving all my glass to Big Bend, which by the way was a pain in the butt. But worth it. Turns out that the store didn't end up going out of business after all.

Anyway, I am gonna run and get something else done before the little one wakes up. Here's some recent Sara pictures. All you Facebookers out there have probably already seen the top one, so I post it for those of you that don't waste hours of your life on FB!