Advice sought for fabric application/gluing problem please.

Posted by Trish Brown on March 15, 2008, 6:16 pm

salmon wrote:
show/hide quoted text

I think the fact that your shapes are woven and your T-shirts are knit
will stymie you. Unless you're able to stitch around the edges, that is.
Why don't you blanket stitch (or needleturn) around the shapes by hand?
It doesn't take long! Once you get into a rhythm, it's surprising how
relaxing it is and how fast the work progresses.

For my money, whatever fabric glue you use will fail as soon as the
person inside the T-shirt moves. The only way to neaten the edges of the
polyester and be absolutely certain they will stay put is to sew them
down. IMHO. For extra insurance, I'd use both methods: heat'n'bond them
down and then stitch around the edges as well.

(NB. Am I going mad, or do I recall seeing a special version of
heat'n'bond for applying wovens to knits?)

--
Trish Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Posted by Kay Lancaster on March 15, 2008, 10:42 pm

Adhesive wouldn't be my first choice (far from it!), but try this method of
fusing -- it works well for interfacings and might work here

1) Prepare your ironing board. Remove any of those metallized board covers
and replace with plain cotton muslin, duck or canvas.

2) Prepare your press cloth. Dip plain muslin in water, and wring out by hand
till the fabric is moist, not dripping.

3) Prepare the iron. For most household irons, set it to "dry" and "linen"
(that is, no steam, high heat). Preheat for at least 5 minutes.

4) Place the t-shirt on the ironing board. Add the adhesive backed
appliques. Cover with the wrung-out press cloth. Press (straight down, with
force, not sliding back and forth in an ironing motion) for 15 seconds. Move
the iron and press again until all the appliques have been pressed on.
Press cloth should be dry but not charring.

5) Now comes the hard part: DO NOT MOVE THE T-SHIRT UNTIL IT IS COOL.
No, cool, as in room temperature. Get your fingers off the edge of that
applique. Cool. Completely cool. Ok, now you can try to lift the
applique.

If the applique lifts, try again, increasing the dwell time of the
iron in 5 second increments until it stays. If the polyester melts, try
a cooler iron or a shorter dwell time. If the adhesive strikes through,
choose another with a lesser amount of adhesive. The keys to fusing
fabric are heat, steam, getting the fabric dry and then cooled without
disturbing it. Household steam irons don't produce enough steam to
do the job thoroughly, and the aluminized ironing board covers seem to
keep the fabric both too wet and too hot for good fusing.

Kay (who thinks it'd be a lot easier to just do a corded raw-edge applique
and call it done)

Posted by salmon on March 16, 2008, 7:12 am

Thanks very much for your generous advice. I will go and try these
now and report back with my results. Thank you very much.

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Advice sought for fabric application/gluing problem please. - Page 2