all about GLUE

[HelenaZF]

a couple of more glue tips:



Avoiding glue marks

If you are dealing with fabrics that show glue marks, you can often avoid them by spreading the tacky glue quite thinly, waiting a bit until it begins to tack and then laying the fabric over it. Smoothe the fabric over the glue gently so as not to force the glue far up into the weave of the fabric.



Strategically hiding glue marks



park: Try to glue shapes down just around the edges. Then, when you glue finishing trims over top of them, the glue marks are hidden.



park: When joining silky fabrics, you WILL get a glue mark. In my celebration streamers, which are pieces of jewel-toned silky fabric, there are definite glue marks at the joints from the washable fabric glue. Adding trim would make the streamers too stiff and heavy. So the solution I came up with was to cover the glued joints with permanent black marker. It made the streamers look like stained glass and added zero weight or stiffness.



Sealing raw edges

Thinned down Tacky glue can be used to seal raw fabric edges and is a lot less expensive than Fray Check or other formulations made for that purpose. This can be really helpful if you are doing a mammoth project that goes on for yards & yards. I think there is an Aleene's product for sealing edges too. It's probably called something clever like "Frayed Not".



However, most of the time, if I'm sealing a fabric edge I figure why not make it decorative at the same time. So I generally use fabric glitter paint applied in a thin bead and brushed flat.