Monday, August 26, 2013

Summer Bloggin' - Stabilizers and Stitches - Part Two

Summer Bloggin' on &Stitches

This week we continue where we left off last week; Paloma shares more of her experiences with using stabilizers,this time for use with jersey knits. Do check our her first post which you can find right here.

Thank you, Paloma!

Paloma writes the blog Three Kitchen Fairies. Here she shares her sewing and embroidery projects as well as her adventures living in Mexico. Paloma also has a shop where you can find her embroidery patterns as well other goodies.

Blog: Three Kitchen Fairies
Shop: Three Kitchen Fairies

When I first tried to embroider a T-shirt I felt very frustrated. If I looked closely I could see that I was actually disturbing the rows of knitted material in the shirt with my needle. At the same time it was complicated to mount the fabric just right in the embroidery hoop. A big enough piece of lightweight cut-away interfacing helped to keep the jersey knit in place.

First I turned the embroidery pattern into a iron on transfer with an iron transfer pen. Then I cut a big enough piece of stabilizer and pinned it to the reverse of the front of the t-shirt. I turned the t-shirt the right way and and carefully placed it in the right position between the two parts of my embroidery hoop. The stabilizer helped the fabric stay in place without stretching it too far!!


I stitched Carina's embroidery pattern with no problems! I cut away the remaining stabilizer. I love how this t-shirt turned out. The best part is that it has been washed many times and it still looks good.

My last stabilizer experience was using the ultra solvy water soluble stabilizer. I tried this experiment specially for this post. One of the things that I like about this stabilizer is that since it's such a sturdy material, I successfully was able to draw my embroidery pattern directly on top of it.

I mounted the t-shirt in my embroidery hoop, then I pinned the stabilizer in place. I used a few pins to keep the stabilizer in place. Stitching this piece was such a pleasure. The stabilizer makes the stitching as taut as a drum. The stitches “locked” beautifully in place.

When done with my embroidery, I cut away the excess material (ultra solvy). I immersed the t-shirt in a bucket of warm water. It was a bit hard to tell if the stabilizer was completely gone. I hung the shirt to dry, and ironed it when dry. I realized a tiny bit of stabilizer still remained in the embroidery threads. I guess I have to rinse it a bit more...

After experimenting with these stabilizers I can only say that there are so many possibilities. It's just a matter of mixing and matching your materials to find the perfect balance.

Which stabilizers do you like to use with tshirt and similar fabrics?


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