A Test
I have watched quite a few television shows that feature test kitchens for recipes and kitchen gadgets. They have been entertaining and helpful.
Today the sewing studio did a test of its own. Stabilizer and machine embroidery goes hand in hand. Stabilizers are needed to allow the needle to punch that embroidery thread in between the warp and the weft hundreds of times. Both layers are then put into a hoop to allow a taut surface for the embroidery to begin. Well . . . stabilizers come from multiple companies and each one has specific instructions for various fabrics and how many stitches in each digitized design. Daunting to say the least.
I enjoy doing dish towels, singularly or in sets of seven. The days of the week have always been popular. When I began doing dish towels Mom had several patterns intended to be ironed on. Embroidery floss was a must in every household. I still enjoy my collections of embroidery floss even if I don’t use them often. Once the design had been ironed once . . . that’s all folks. That at point is when we collected the milk hauler’s carbon paper receipt from the daily pickup to trace the pattern on multiple times.
The orange was done with a sheet of water soluble, the green with the brushed on soluble.
Digressing: Early in spring I decided to put my scraps of water soluble stabilizers to use. I crammed them into my 1/2 pint fruit jar and then added water to the fruit jar. As the stabilizer dissolved I kept an eye on the consistency. When the amount of water that I had added had the solution like wallpaper paste, I deemed it done. I had two dish towels to do my test on. On the towel with the green thread, I had used a brush and brushed the liquid stabilizer on the back of a portion of the towel, allowing it to dry before hooping it. It was hooped as a single layer. The towel with the orange thread, I used a sheet of water soluble stabilizer hooping both layers. I really had to take an up close look. There wasn’t a discernible difference in the end result or the quality of the stitching. It had been a good test.
Granted. These were towels that had cost me $1.29 each. Would I go with this if the stitched design was one with over 20,000 dense stitches . . . no. Would I go with this if the stitching was on a purchased garment with no chance of a do-over . . . no. This little honey jar of mine will come in handy for simplistic stitching or when I think the sheet stabilizer I am using could use a little punch of extra support in an area of dense stitching. That would need some preplanning to make sure the fabric had dried after the brush application.
The best part of my test was that I can continue learning how to make use of my resources. Dennis likes that idea of waste not; want not. Gotta love that cowboy’s input into the sewing studio.