How Does a New Material Handle?

My regular readers know I love a bit of glitter! Last weekend I went to a big store here in Montevideo that stocks all kinds of things for the craftsperson and upholsterer including leather, batting, threads, zippers, crochet and macrame supplies. Strangely enough they don’t stock the needles and embroidery thread I was hoping for… but there’s another merceria nearby that will be open when I’m in that zone later in the week. Even without those things though, Centro Tapicero is a veritable Alladin’s Cave for people like me. Just when I thought I was ready to go to the cashier, I spotted this fabric – and just had to buy the minimum 0.5m x 1.5m cut to try it out for, um, something.

Pewter colour, the surface of this polyester is metallic and to me, irresistable.

It’s a metallic finish on a very fine black jersey knit base – the surface looks a little like sharkskin satin perhaps – anyway quite irresistable. Once I got home of course I did some sample making to see how it handles. It’s a lot easier to handle than leather, and as I’m in the middle of another project just at the moment, I have time to think about how I’m going to use it.

I cut some of my beloved squares and wavy bits and, using a pewter coloured thread ‘tacked’ down some shapes into position. Pin and needle holes do show.

Here’s what did and found with this material

  • Far left – using a long stitch using pewter coloured thread, it was easy enough to machine sew down BUT wrinkling and stretching occurred when I sped up.
  • Wavy bit – hand tacked into place and stitched over with a sewing machine red thread and a perle #8 in the pewter colour…. hmmm – I don’t care for the stitching showing underneath, but potentially useful to know.
  • Like fine leather, it can be more easily pinned and hand sewn, but marks show if it is unpicked.
  • The squares -were stitched with, from L-R: perle #8, neon red machine embroidery thread, black perle #12, metalic silver, but the effect of this thread was blah – not significant enough to bother with.
  • the wavy bit from lower left corner diagonally up is glued down – there’s no apparent damage from the glue on the surface of this material, so full marks of approval for that – sometimes the glue causes wrinking and distortion on similar fabrics.
  • Ironing: at even a medium heat the iron caught on the surface of the hotplate; but turned over and ironed from the back at top heat all survived just fine; and ironing with top heat and using a teflon sheet there seemed to damage either. This augurs well!

The question now is – should I return this week and buy some more?

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3 Responses to “How Does a New Material Handle?”

  1. How funny. It was the thread over the squares that I like the best. I say yes, go buy more.

  2. Alison says:

    Sheila – I agree, and will be over that way on wednesday afternoon… I’ve already noted the address of where I bought it and the nearby merceria/haberdashery that stocks the preferred darning needles I most often stitch with 🙂 The (less important) reason I’m going over that way is a periodic medical check 🙂

  3. Alison says:

    DH drove me over – the parking’s a problem – I DID buy some more of it!!! 1m X 1.5m – of the pewter finish fabric AND they had the same in a nice gold so I bought a metre of that, too!

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