Sunday, December 11, 2016

Mistyfuse 101

I love Mistyfuse so much, that my face and name are on the front of a 10 yard package of white.  Mistyfuse is a fusible web that you iron onto the backside of your fabrics to create quilts, paper collage, cards, and motifs. It isn't a paper backed product, just fusible web, and it doesn't change the hand of the cloth. Easy to sew through by machine or by hand. You can buy it in a package, or by the bolt.

The first thing you want to do is press flat the fabric that you want to add Mistyfuse to. I am using a dry iron on the cotton setting.  Sometimes I spray a bit of water on the creases to help steam them out.

This is an irregular piece of fabric, known as a scrap. I am carefully laying the web out on the fabric. I do not want any of it to overlap over the edges. If you leave it over the edges, it will burn up a bit with the pressing, but then leave all of these little bits of melted web that can get on your iron, and you don't want that.

I am carefully laying this on the wrong side of the fabric, and moving away all of the leftover threads that are on the edge.

I am cutting around this one because of the big cut on the left. Cutting it just inside the fabric edge.  Save the piece you cut out in a ziplock bag, away from your ironing space.

Now I am covering up the fusible that is laying on the fabric with a Goddess Sheet (also sold my Mistyfuse), and you can use parchment paper also.  It seals the deal, and helps keep away the web from your iron.

Using my dry iron on the cotton setting, I run my iron around the area in a circular motion, being careful to press the edges all the way around.

Here's my Continental iron on almost the highest setting. I buy this iron on Amazon and buy two at at time, just in case.

You tell if it is done, if you see this shiny sheen on the surface. If when you pull up the Goddess Sheet or a piece of parchment paper, and you see strings of web, it needs more pressing.

When you are done fusing your fabrics, be sure to clean your hot iron with about 5 dryer (never been used) sheets folded together and use a potholder, so you don't burn your fingers. When clean, press your iron on a scrap of fabric to get whatever is left, instead of on your project.
Then you can make a piece of art!  This was made with scraps (10x7), fused with Mistyfuse, free motion machine quilted. Made for the SAQA Trunk Show of me. Self portrait.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Jamie. Thank you so much for this tutorial. It helped me a lot to understand how to use Mistyfuse. I bought a package to use with butterfly blocks I made, but I couldn't figure it out, so I used another product. If I wanted to to do cut outs and leave the outer perimeter (frame) intact, is there a way I could get lines from a pattern onto the Mistyfuse so I could do the cut outs? What I did was trace the pattern onto the other product, ironed it onto the black fabric, then did my cut outs, leaving the frame of the butterfly intact. Hope this makes sense to you. Thanks in advance for your reply.

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  2. THANK YOU for this great tute. I'd heard Misty Fuse was a good product, but I'd never bought it because I didn't know how to use it! I have a project that'll be perfect for my first use. It'll be even more fun to buy it with your photo on it! Thanks, also, for the iron cleaning advice. I'll assume the dryer sheets are fresh out of the box, not used.

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  3. Thanks so much!!! Great tutorial and I'm definitely going to try it out now!

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  4. I love sewing with Misty Fuse, but can only use it when over casting the edges not using a straight stitch: because Misty let's the edges fray. Anyone help?

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