This week, we’re thrilled to kick off another series of guest posts featuring the incredibly talented Alison Glass. Alison and I first met at Fall Quilt Market last year. She was very interested in working with different Pellon® products to turn quilt weight fabrics into something more suitable for home décor. Think of your favorite fabric line and then imagine it as a cover for your new ottoman (or couch, love seat, dining chairs, etc…) Alison was hopeful that her experimentation and subsequent findings might open up a whole new world of possibilities for home decorating and upholstery. So, without further pause, I hand the reigns over to Alison!
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Designer: Alison Glass
Product Review: Pellon® ES114 Easy-Shaper®, 931TD Fusible Midweight Interfacing, & 808 Craft Fuse®. Comparing and contrasting three Pellon products for use as a backing for quilt weight fabric in an upholstery application.
Purpose: Research adding bulk and stability to quilt weight cotton to make it an appropriate weight for use in upholstery projects.
Project: Recovering the seat bottoms of three chairs with three different products. All chair bottoms are round and similar in size.
Fabrics Used: Column in Morning and Fountain in Night from the Lucky Penny collection by Alison Glass for Andover Fabrics.
Applying the fusible interfacing to the fabric
ES114 seems the lightest of the three interfacings. It does not have much stretch, but it is not stiff either, which is helpful. It was the most difficult for me apply to the fabric, and took the most amount of time in this part of the project. It didn’t seem to stick as well, but I also was not being very patient. It really did need to cool completely to stick, but the fabric was very smooth without any puckering, which is super, and something that I thought might be a concern, but it wasn’t.
931TD is a nice weight, and has a good amount of stretch. It mirrors the stretch of quilt weight fabric quite well, and it was easier to attach to the fabric than ES114. This group was also very smooth without any puckering.
808 is the heaviest and stiffest of the three. It was easy, easy to apply to the fabric! Very fast, very smooth, and I can see tons of projects that this would be a great product for.
Attaching the fabric/interfacing to the seat bottoms
ES114: This worked pretty well. There is some puckering around the curves, but it is workable. A little more stretch would be preferable, but the finished seat bottom looks good.
931TD: First choice of the three! The amount of stretch is very good for this application. There were very few puckers and the fabric/interfacing combination worked well together, as one piece, with stretch but also stability.
808: This was by far the hardest to attach with the most puckering around the curves. It is, to me, a bit stiff for upholstery. The fabric cannot stretch at all.
Conclusions
While all three products are wonderful, 931TD is my first choice for this purpose of the three. There are so many great quilt weight cotton fabrics, finding a product that can add some weight so that the fabrics can be used for upholstery is exciting. As far as how the fabric will wear, that will need some time, however as far as working with the fabric, the stretch that 931TD allows the fabric to maintain, as well as the combined weight of the two is key to making this a workable project. As a note, if curves were not involved in the project it would make less of a difference since working around them would not be necessary. In that case 808 would also be a good choice. The reality is though, that most upholstery projects do involve some amount of curves.
Also, I did really like the 808 Craft Fuse, and as I stated earlier, can really see how it would work VERY well for a lot of projects where a good amount of stiffness is needed. It almost made the fabric similar to a heavy weight paper, almost foldable. Very nice.
Up next: Using 987F Fusible Fleece as a backing for quilt weight fabric in an upholstery application.
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About Alison:
Alison Glass is a surface and space designer living in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and son. Aspiring to create a career for herself, Alison started a design business in 2007 focusing on space remodels and custom home decor pieces. Her love of color and shape and the combination of the two eventually lead to making the decision to step back from the local design business and work toward her goal of creating artwork for surfaces. She is thrilled for the opportunity to design fabric for Andover.
Alison is inspired by the multitude of details in the world, both natural and those made by artisans, particularly in urban architecture. She is passionate about the ideas of making choices that are consistent with who a person is, being increasingly comfortable with ambiguity, and continuing to move forward and live in the new. She loves to talk about these ideas, as well as art, design, architecture, color, kids, okay, pretty much anything, with anyone who cares to talk! She is incredibly grateful to her husband and kids, for who they are, and for their enthusiasm and support of her work, as well as the amazing varied and interesting friends she is meeting along the way who are a constant source of inspiration and new possibilities.
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Find Alison Online:
Website :: Blog :: Facebook :: Instagram :: Pinterest :: Twitter :: Flickr
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