Quick Post…

I’ve gotten TONS of response from the HNBL post and I’d like to follow up on some questions (quickly, before I head to church). I can go in to more detail later if need be!
Mainly, “what kind of stabilizer do you use?”
Answer: MEDIUM CUTAWAY

You can check out this post to see where I went over HOOPING:
I use medium cutaway on all shirts and I hoop all shirts. Well, I did use a fast frame, sticky stabilizer and added medium cutaway on ONE SHIRT recently, but that’s a different post. 99.9% of the time I HOOP. Shirts, that is. I buy my cutaway from www.sewingmachine.com2.2 or 2.0 oz precut squares and the 15″ x 25 yard roll. They call these type stabilizers “commercial” and they are super cheap! I highly recommend checking them out!
The other main question was on the Comfort Cover. There are several brands of them and I included links in my post last week. I USE Comfort Cover from www.Sewingmachine.com. I have used Floriani Dreamweave before too, and Sulky makes a version of it too. It’s basically a protective add-on to your shirt. It protects the thread and it protects sensitive skin from the back of the applique and thread. You’ve probably seen it on the back of Carter’s clothing with appliques and I noticed it on a J. Khaki (Belk) dress Mallory has that has an applique on it. It does come off in the wash sometimes, or it does come loose I should say. But… I think it’s a nice touch and it has come off of my Carter’s stuff before, so I think it’s just the nature of the product and your washing machine! Not that it comes off every time and is a waste of your time and money, but I have heard that it eventually comes off and that’s fine. It’s really personal preference as to whether or not you want to use it. I’m sure if you had a heat press you could fuse it on there better than my Shark iron!!
We showed our house this week (for the umpeenth time) and I took a picture.
This is our dining room when I’m in the thick of WORK:
This is our dining room when the house is shown! The machine stays, but the rest of the thread, iron, ironing board, fabric, stabilizers, trash can, computer, pens, scissors, shirts, football?, etc etc etc is PUT AWAY!! You can imagine how old this gets!
For this reason I’m not doing a whole lot of customer work right now. It’s really a matter of timing and if I happen to have a little bit of work to do and I think it’s possible to take more in (when you call). Right now I have 4 shirts to do for this week and I’ve had a couple of  people ask about bringing stuff. My goal is to NOT let 50 shirts pile up. A, I have no place to put them (my closet is full), and B, that is added stress with the house for sale AND if for some reason it sells and I’ve got 50 shirts piled up to do. When we do sell the house I would imagine I’ll be out of commission for a while!
If I continue to get Q’s about the stabilizer and such I’ll try to do a better post! I enjoy all the comments and have gotten tons of comments and questions on Facebook!

Comments

  1. Do u download a design to ur machine to get the design outline

  2. Paulie Rollins says

    I dearly love the HNBL! But if I use it with cottons, both applique and the base it’s stuck to, will it shrink right along wth the fabrics when the finished project is washed the first time? Or is it going to keep the areas of fabric it’s stuck to from shrinking, causing puckering? I have an enormous stash of applique scraps that I can’t imagine trying to preshrink before using.

    • I have never pre-shrunk anything! It should shrink right along with the t-shirt. I used to show an example of a washed applique t-shirt when I did classes and you could not tell it had been washed!