Stabilizers and Freedom
I’ve just printed out a chart that lists over seventy different kinds of interfacing available to purchase. This is a daunting number to choose from. If you sew or you use cloth in some way, you know that stabilizing the fabric can be crucial. Necklines, sleeveless armholes, and button plackets will distort sooner or later if not given some sort of stability. The hangings I make need a layer of stabilizer if I choose to machine sew.
I have a drawer full of fusible and non-fusible interfacing products. Some dissolve in water, some are stretchy, some are light, and some are heavy, some are sheer, and some are pieces of cloth left over from other projects. The color range is limited--black, white, off-white, a pale yellow and a pale pink, and one length of beige. I recently read that silk organza makes a fine stabilizer for many projects. This adds a wide color palette which the imagination is having fun with. A sultry red, for instance, under a conservative black shirt. Or lime green, a color that clashes with my fair skin, inside a maroon fabric.
When I learned to sew over fifty years ago, there were few choices. Pellon, a nonwoven soft-to-stiff fabric, horsehair, and some woven versions of sew-in. Fusible interfacings were just making their way to the home market. When they first arrived, they were greeted with enthusiasm in our household, but we soon discovered their unreliability. A glue is applied to one side of the fabric in manufacturing. To use, you press with a dry iron and a pressing cloth for at least ten seconds. They frequently came unglued in the wash.
The current crop of fusible interfacing is much more reliable if you prepare by pre-shrinking and by pressing longer than the usual recommended ten seconds. I’m not convinced they will hold up as long as a well-made garment, like the wool jackets I have that my mother made over fifty years ago, but I like the convenience for most things I make.
What I don’t like is choosing. I noticed a book in a store the other day that is solely about this topic. I’m guessing it lists more than seventy choices.
The same is true of thread. Cotton, polyester, quilting cotton, silk, z-twist, s-twist. Machine needles are specialized--stretch, denim, delicate, and so on. I have also six or seven different kinds of pins. I could easily have another dozen if I wished.
Each month, Threads Magazine has an article or two that delves into the details of these items.It adds up both in quantity and cost. In my small ten-drawer roll-around cart, I have thread, needles, scissors, and other gadgets that easily add up to a replacement value of over $500. Some, like my favorite scissors, I’ve had for twenty years or more. Just thinking about my scissors stash, I’m doubling that replacement value.
The point is not that working with cloth is expensive--it is, and even more so if I include what is needed for weaving and dyeing. The point is that it seems to me we’ve convinced ourselves that complexity is good and simplicity is, well, simple. We in this country have come to believe that making product choices is equal to freedom, and that freedom is inherently good and proof of a working democracy (good). Autonomy, stability, and freedom are to be actualized through acquisitiveness. This seems to me to be the current version of the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by our constitution.
Today I want to choose a stabilizer for a current project. I went to the internet to do a little research. I spent, perhaps, a half hour sorting through articles before I chose to print the chart I have before me. On closer reading, it is of no value for helping me decide what works for what I want to do. I could spend a good part of the morning doing research, getting in my car and driving to the two fabric stores in town, looking, feeling, buying.
Instead, I’m going to pull out my drawer of interfacings, pick three to start, and then narrow it to one. I predict it will take ten minutes. I’d prefer to save my choosing energy for which kind of tea to drink while I sit and enjoy the cat antics and the blue, blue sky. After that fine leisure, I will have some sweet, slow time to stitch. Ah, freedom.
I have a drawer full of fusible and non-fusible interfacing products. Some dissolve in water, some are stretchy, some are light, and some are heavy, some are sheer, and some are pieces of cloth left over from other projects. The color range is limited--black, white, off-white, a pale yellow and a pale pink, and one length of beige. I recently read that silk organza makes a fine stabilizer for many projects. This adds a wide color palette which the imagination is having fun with. A sultry red, for instance, under a conservative black shirt. Or lime green, a color that clashes with my fair skin, inside a maroon fabric.
When I learned to sew over fifty years ago, there were few choices. Pellon, a nonwoven soft-to-stiff fabric, horsehair, and some woven versions of sew-in. Fusible interfacings were just making their way to the home market. When they first arrived, they were greeted with enthusiasm in our household, but we soon discovered their unreliability. A glue is applied to one side of the fabric in manufacturing. To use, you press with a dry iron and a pressing cloth for at least ten seconds. They frequently came unglued in the wash.
The current crop of fusible interfacing is much more reliable if you prepare by pre-shrinking and by pressing longer than the usual recommended ten seconds. I’m not convinced they will hold up as long as a well-made garment, like the wool jackets I have that my mother made over fifty years ago, but I like the convenience for most things I make.
What I don’t like is choosing. I noticed a book in a store the other day that is solely about this topic. I’m guessing it lists more than seventy choices.
The same is true of thread. Cotton, polyester, quilting cotton, silk, z-twist, s-twist. Machine needles are specialized--stretch, denim, delicate, and so on. I have also six or seven different kinds of pins. I could easily have another dozen if I wished.
Each month, Threads Magazine has an article or two that delves into the details of these items.It adds up both in quantity and cost. In my small ten-drawer roll-around cart, I have thread, needles, scissors, and other gadgets that easily add up to a replacement value of over $500. Some, like my favorite scissors, I’ve had for twenty years or more. Just thinking about my scissors stash, I’m doubling that replacement value.
The point is not that working with cloth is expensive--it is, and even more so if I include what is needed for weaving and dyeing. The point is that it seems to me we’ve convinced ourselves that complexity is good and simplicity is, well, simple. We in this country have come to believe that making product choices is equal to freedom, and that freedom is inherently good and proof of a working democracy (good). Autonomy, stability, and freedom are to be actualized through acquisitiveness. This seems to me to be the current version of the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by our constitution.
Today I want to choose a stabilizer for a current project. I went to the internet to do a little research. I spent, perhaps, a half hour sorting through articles before I chose to print the chart I have before me. On closer reading, it is of no value for helping me decide what works for what I want to do. I could spend a good part of the morning doing research, getting in my car and driving to the two fabric stores in town, looking, feeling, buying.
Instead, I’m going to pull out my drawer of interfacings, pick three to start, and then narrow it to one. I predict it will take ten minutes. I’d prefer to save my choosing energy for which kind of tea to drink while I sit and enjoy the cat antics and the blue, blue sky. After that fine leisure, I will have some sweet, slow time to stitch. Ah, freedom.
posted by Forgive the Dream at 8:44 AM
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