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Spray Adhesives
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There are a few excellent spray adhesives on the market which work very well and do not clog up your machine.
The most common use for spray adhesive is for appliqué. If you have a paper, cardboard or even a plastic pattern for your applique, you can use spray adhesive to keep your pattern secure to the fabric during cutting and placing. This allows you to spray the adhesive on the back of the pattern and place it on the right side of your fabric. You can also use a double sided fusing such as Vliesofix or Wonder Under.
Spray adhesive can also be used to position garments or items that cannot be hooped. These can include caps, purses, bags, small items that are smaller than your smallest hoop.
Some Helpfull Hints for Using Spray Adhesive.
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If you are using film for the top of the fabric stabilizer spray the film itself so that it will peel off without leaving much sticky residue on the fabric.
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Anytime you are placing stabilizer on the top, or the side the embroidery is on, spray the adhesive on the stabilizer itself and not the fabric.
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Experiment with several sprays as some are much more sticky than others and work well for different applications.
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Look for spray adhesives that say repositionable There is no need to use the really expensive spray adhesives for most work.
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If you are having trouble with the stabilizer coming apart from the fabric, your bond is not good enough, you can try spraying both sides lightly and waiting for anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes before bonding the two pieces together.
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Even if you are just spraying one side wait a little bit, per the cans instructions, before bonding.
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Always place the material you are going to spray on a towel so that you can wash it after a few uses, or inside an old shoe box to keep the spray glue from landing on areas you dont want it to.
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At the end of your embroidery session or the end of the day be sure to turn the spray can upside down and spray to clean the spray tip – otherwise after awhile it will clog and you can’t get it to spray again.
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If the can of spray does clog and wont come out set it aside for about a week and use another can. It will dry out and become useable again Spray tips can be soaked in turpentine if they wont dry out and become useable again.
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To clean your hoops after they get a build-up of adhesive and lint use Goof-off or De-solv-it and a paper towel. They will remove the goo and not harm the hoops .
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A Commercial Tip of how to improve your hooping using Spray Adhesive.
by Evy Hawkins of A Bit of Stitch
Commercial embroidery plants have two goals: Sell a lot of work and do that work faster and cheaper than their competitors. Yet they must also maintain quality or they will lose to their competitors anyway. This means that they need a few tricks up their sleeves!
Thankfully, the home embroiderer does not have to worry about speed. Yet we do worry about quality, and nothing is more disappointing than stitching out a beautiful design that looks awful after stitching. Puckers all around the design, lumpy, wavy fill areas, outline stitches wandering far from their places…sound familiar?
As you have surely learned by now, stabilizer is an embroiderer’s best friend. How you apply that stabilizer, though, is what brings out the best qualities in that best friend!
Commercial embroidery cannot be babied…no ironing on interfacing to stabilize a knit! No hooping and re-hooping trying to get unwieldy stabilizers to stay put! So just what do they do? They glue. Temporary spray adhesive is an essential product for the commercial embroiderer, try it out for yourself and see why. Here are some steps to follow...
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Do not ever stretch the fabric in your hoop. Forget about drum tightness. A drum-tight-stretched fabric will relax when taken from the hoop and this will cause puckers and waves in and around your embroidery.
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Hoop the fabric firmly, do not stretch, but do not allow any wrinkles or sags to be there either.
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Cut a piece of stabilizer suitable to your fabric just slightly larger than your hoop.
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Place that stabilizer in a cardboard box, well away from your machine, and spray one side lightly* with temporary spray adhesive. (* Adjust the amount of spray coverage to your fabric weight. A heavy fabric, like denim, would need more spray, a light weight cotton, less.)
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Place the stabilizer sticky side up to the bottom of your hooped fabric, thereby gluing the stabilizer to not only your fabric, but also to your hoop. If you feel that you need two or more layers of stabilizer under this design, cut them the same size as the hoop and slide them under the hoop after you have placed the hoop in the machine.
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Stitch out your design.
My favorite spray adhesive is 505 Spray and Fix. It can be found any where embroidery supplies are sold. Any clean up necessary of oversprayed glue can be done with denatured alcohol. (Sold in hardware stores) It is a good idea to clean your hoops of any buildup from time to time using this alcohol.
The reason I suggest spraying your stabilizer in a box is that it prevents overspraying onto something that you do not want glue on. I use a box with a lid that I can prop open just enough to reach my hand and the glue bottle into. Remember, always use the smallest possible hoop needed for the design, and always preshrink your fabric or garment.
Try this commercial trick for yourself. I am sure you will enjoy the results!
Evy Hawkins
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