Posted by dravon in Education & Instruction | Comments Off on Working with Wash Away Embroidery Stabilizer
Working with Wash Away Embroidery Stabilizer
Oh boy was THIS a busy weekend!! I got an entire 16th century German pant set blocked and patterned, incorporating our discussed ideas which have sat unused in my brain for the last 5+ years. The hubby tried it out and said they were the most comfortable pants he’s worn, plus he was able to do every single German Long Sword pose taken in the Meyer training manual … all without ripping open his pants. Every other pair of pants he’s had, he’s blown the crotch out because of the period sword work. Very excited to see how to one goes, but I’m not ready yet to share more than excitement. Full prototype revealed a few fit problems around the waist which I’m addressing on the block/pattern and then will put into the second prototype.
On to the title of this post. I’m still working on the Anita Goodesign May Workshop samples (join us for the April workshop next week!!). I finally got the utensil holder all finished. Pretty!!
Also finally finished up with the binding on the placemat sample. Here is what I have of the entire-piece place-setting workshop sample to date:
Lovely! I really love the pale grey and navy blue combination that Janice picked to use. Striking! The new one I worked on today was the candle wrap. This embroidery required working with water soluble stabilizer.
What exactly is water soluble stabilizer? I’ll do a little back tracking here, for those who don’t really do much machine embroidery. Stabilizer is required to provide enough stability (hence the name) to the item being embroidered in order to ensure that the stitches turn out correctly and look good. For those who might have a more print media background, the analogy would be stabilizer ensures that the color registration lines up correctly. Good stabilizer choices mean good looking end result; bad choices mean ugly or unsatisfactory results.
Stabilizers come in a variety of “flavors”. Each flavor does specific things. For this post, I’m focusing on the Water Soluble flavor of stabilizer. As the name would imply, this will literally dissolve in water. Why on earth would I want that? In instances where I’m embroidering on something which will be seen on both sides (monogramed towels or handkerchiefs) or can actually see through the embroidery (free-standing lace), then I’ll want to use a stabilizer that goes away entirely and leaves nothing but my pretty embroidery.
Now each “flavor” of stabilizer comes in a variety of types, which I dub “sprinkles”. I think I was hungry for a sundae when I first taught the stabilizer class, but the students seemed to understand the ideas and found them funny enough to actually remember all the flavors and their variety of sprinkles. For water soluble, the sprinkles I’m referring to here in this post are a “film” stabilizer and a “fibrous” stabilizer.
Film water soluble stabilizer looks like Reynold’s wrap to a degree, though it comes in a variety of weights. The weight we had opened at the store was about the thickness of 2 normal layers of Reynold’s wrap, though you can get it as heavy as … oh, almost like a fruit roll-up level of thickness. I hooped 2 layers of the lightweight stuff, said a quick prayer, and went to town embroidering the design. All went well, until the heavy embroidery started…
In this picture, I’m trying to show that not only did the film stabilizer not have the strength to withstand the stitching process (see it torn?) it also wasn’t up to the task of ensuring that the stitch layers were where they needed to be. See the red stitching? That’s supposed to be completely underneath the blue stitching. Bad stabilizer choice for this job! Bad! That’ll learn me for being lazy.
Fibrous water soluble stabilizer looks more like fabric, so it’s stronger at the thinner weights and is actually made for “in the air” embroidery like free standing lace. I reached for that first, but we’d used up the last roll and I was attempting to make due with the film version. Ah well. Apart from the shocking colors (I forgot to reset the spool preferences when I edited the design on the machine, and so what was supposed to be blue stitched out in yellow and vice versa. Oops!), you can see that a single layer of fibrous water soluble did a fantastic job of holding everything steady. Good stabilizer choice for this job!
As I was rinsing this stabilizer out, I was thinking “huh, I should do a quick little video on how to wash this stuff out easily and quickly.” Anyhoo, there’s the little blurb for the day. I figure that since I certainly learn as much or more from mistakes as I do from what is done correctly, that I might as well share the wealth!
Oh, and my boss gave me permission to share my posts in the store Facebook page, since I’m talking about classes, products, tips-and-tricks, etc. *shwing!*
Until we meet again, Happy Sewing!
– Dravon
