Glass "Quilt"

One day this past weekend, when it was warm enough for me to work on glass without my fingers freezing up. I started with some small pieces of glass that I had pre-cut back home.

Basically, I was making pendants while talking with people milling around Chatty Crafty. I tend to start with a few colors and work in that palette for a while adding new accent color here and there, so at the end of the day, I had quite a few pieces that all had a similar feel color-wise.

Fourteen or so small pieces, intended for one purpose, looked so cool laying all together on the work table. So, I experimented with different patterns, a piece here, a piece there. It seemed so quilt-like.





In the end, I couldn't bring myself to fire them individually. So, I moved them on to a rectangle of black glass and glued each piece into place. I decided not to cap this creation with clear glass, because I feared that the gaps between each quilt piece would trap too much air and the resulting bubbling would be distracting.

Part of the fun of glass fusing is not knowing exactly what effect the firing process will have on a piece. It's exciting to open up a fully cooled kiln and find something completely unlike what's expected! Sometimes it can also be disappointing. A broken piece, an ugly bubble, faded color - there are many things that can go wrong.

But, in the case of this glass quilt, I was pleased with what I found the next morning. It just makes me feel happy when I look at it. It reminds me of the times I visited my mawmaw's house in Georgia. She didn't have central heat, just wood stoves in various rooms. At night when the fires were low, it would get very cold in her house. She would pile her beautiful, hand made quilts on our beds so thick that it was an effort to even turn over. I loved the softness of the fabric, the beautiful prints, the intricate geometric patterns.



The colors seemed to darken and get richer than the pre-fired color. The color also looks deeper than it does with the clear glass cap I often use.





I plan to put this tile on a canvas board and possibly frame. I will post shots of the completed piece in the coming days.