Art glass buttons techniques

I have 40 years of solid sewing experience, topped by 20 years of knitting (and a thin veneer of weaving :-)). While I love buttons and always seek out unusual ones, preferring them to overt jewelry, I've often been disappointed by glass buttons in the past. Which is why I decided to make my own when a better alternative presented itself.

The problems are two-fold with the few handmade buttons available, and in my opinion both come down to the fact that everyone else makes them out of soft glass. It's very nice, very traditional and Venitian, and comes in a dizzying array of colors, which is commendable. It's also easy to work, and requires only a simple propane torch, lending itself easily to garage production. Unfortunately, in my opinion it makes buttons that are good only for collectors, and don't have a real functional life.

First there is the obvious problem of fragility. I may be a slob, but I really don't want to worry about dropping my sweater on the floor, even the bathroom floor. Shattering on a simple fall is just not OK, I want to have to at least slam a car door right over it to lose it. For that matter, I don't want to have an attack if a Laundry Mistake is made and my beautiful buttons get thrown into the wash with the less fabulous stuff. I'm willing to go to fair lengths to ensure durability in what I make, lots of prewashing and seam reinforcing etc, but I'm not willing to change my whole way of life to coddle some fragile object. I also don't want to turn regular cleaning into an ordeal.

Then there is the more subtle problem of weight. I've had to remove heavy buttons from sweaters because the band stretched out 4" beyond its original length overnight. I personally have enough trouble getting bands the correct length :-), I don't want to have to worry about later stretching. If you use soft glass buttons on woven materials, the same problem is if anything even more accentuated. It seems nothing but chicken wire will make an adequate interfacing for a soft glass button band. Seriously, I've used plastic canvas on occasion, in bags mostly, but that's kind of repulsive for wearables. I suppose it might be squeak by for a heavy coat, but is just not going to be adequate for a silk blouse, or anything much in between. And while you could use a gros-grain band on a cardigan, that also seems to me like a revolting approach.

So my solution is to exclusively use borosilicate glass. You may be more familiar with it under the brand name Pyrex, and in cookware. It's not only very durable, it's also very much lighter than the same volume of soft glass. So I can make buttons that can take a bit of roughing up: they get tested from standing height on the stone fireplace, they often make unplanned trips through the laundry in a pocket. And I can make buttons that can be used on just about anything without needing special scaffolding.

I note with amusement the way in which some beadmakers trumpet the annealing of their wares in a kiln, as if that was a rare and unique feature. I think of it as akin to 'low cholesterol' labels on olive oil... If you're making glass objects, you'd better be annealing them!

In addition, the canonical glass-person recommendation for loops is to use some copper wire, encased in glass or not. I have esthetic problems with that, and sewer's objections. Naked wire would in my experience saw right through thread at a fast clip. So encasing it would be mandatory, which means it would come out pretty thick anyway. In addition, many of those copper loops are on the small side, which means that you can't put yarn through them. But sewing buttons on with thread will pretty quickly eat through your yarn in turn, it's not a good solution for sweaters. Slightly larger loops also allow you to spread the button-bearing load over more of the fabric, always a good idea whether in knits or wovens. And finally I like a button with a lot of transparency - glass to me should have a lot of clear space or it starts looking like varnished modeling clay. Copper wire would lead to some vile-looking bumps rearing up from the back of your button. In short, the integrated glass loops that I use take a lot more skill to make, but in my opinion they're a much better solution for both esthetic and practical reasons.

And finally one of my peeves is that many of the buttons available are cabochon shape, ie semi-spherical. That looks nice on the card, but requires a much larger button hole for the button diameter. I think that for buttons I'm going to use thickness should be moderate, and not out of proportion to diameter.

My mother would tell you that the problem is that a bunch of glass guys who don't sew try to make buttons :-). Then they're surprised when sewers/knitters don't take to them. That's because there are deceptive technical issues to these simple-looking objects. There was a reason why decorative buttons were in vogue for at least a century before they started being used functionally in a systematic way...