Product Review: Mettler Web Bond TA 101 (Spray Adhesive)

So it looks like Mettler has gotten a little deeper into the Notions game with their spray adhesive.  Just about everyone knows Mettler for their thread, which is wonderful and very competitive with Aurifil and Gutterman.  I don't know how long this particular product has been out in general (probably a considerable while), but the shop has carried it for about 6 months and I thought it might be time to give it a review.  I am a spray adhesive girl.  I use it when I can in my quilting projects, and also in other crafts where I want to have a good, but non permanent fix.

Like most all other spray adhesives, it comes in aerosol form, not pump-spray form, which means it should have a fairly even spray distribution...and it delivers.  I found it to come out quickly, evenly and the spray itself was fairly thick.  Rather than coming out as a fine mist like a lot of other sprays, which can make it hard to see where you've sprayed and where you haven't, this comes out whitish and kind of webby and stringy. What I really liked about this, aside from it making me feel like Spiderman for a second, is the fact that I could actually clearly see where my spray had ended up on the fabric. Another bonus is that even where I had sprayed the fabric heavily, the adhesive remained on the fabric surface so there was no absorption into the fabric itself - meaning, no funky patches or color distortion on the right side of the piece.

Because the spray came out as a web instead of a mist, more adhesive came out per spray, which means a little goes a long way - it has a very strong stick.  I was able to leave a project alone for a few weeks without the pieces separating because the glue was weakening, so I was very pleased with that.  Also, despite the amount of glue coming out per spray, I found it to have a lower odor than other sprays.  Often aerosol sprays will have a very strong chemical smell due to the aerosol delivery, and can be off putting to the point where people don't want to use them.  While the smell of this one is still here, to my nose it seemed less stinky than the 501, 505 series of adhesive sprays that you commonly see out in the quilting world.

The only caveat?  This is not your best choice for spray basting a quilt you plan on free motion quilting.  Why?  Here is where it's super stickiness becomes a foe rather than friend...it will make you skip stitches like crazy if you use it as your basting spray for both quilt top and backing.  I was quilting along happily and noticed my machine was skipping stitches, particularly on the curves.  That immediately signaled "tension issue!" to me, so I fiddled with the tension.  Still skipped.  Changed my needle.  Still skipped.  Re-threaded my top thread AND bobbin.  Helped, but still skipped.  It took 2 wall hangings and some scientific method-level process of elimination, but after testing the different variables on a scrap piece of quilt sandwich, I found that the pieces that did NOT have any of the spray adhesive on it didn't have skipped stitches no matter how fast, slow, simply or intricately I was quilting.  I made a couple more quilt sandwiches with different adhesives, and it was the Mettler that seemed to have the skipping issue...the others (505, 501, 301, Dritz) did not.  I did find fewer skipped stitches when used on only one side (quilt top or backing) but not both.  My conclusion is that since it comes out fairly thick, and has such a strong adhesion, it is catching the thread as it moves in and out of the fabric, and preventing it from creating a correct stitch.

So overall, Mettler has put out a good spray adhesive product with low stink and high stick that lasts.  I will not be using it to spray baste a quilt again, but for all other purposes, I think it far surpasses Dritz and the 501, 505 and 301 series.

Product Review: Sewline Quick Thru Needle Threader

Sewline is a company that specializes in sewing and quilting notions, with their most well known product being the mechanical Sewline Fabric Pencil. They are growing more and more popular as a company, as people look for new gadgets to make their quilting process easier. Their pencils are indeed absolutely fabulous, but that's a review for another day. This time around I'll be reviewing their Quick Thru Needle Threader.

This guy.

What a fabulous idea! it looks like a lipstick case, but when you pull the top down, there's a needle threader! And, if you pull the bottom lid off, there's a little case to hold spare needles. What a cute little package, huh? That being said, Sewline, I'm taking you to the woodshed. While this is a great idea for a product, it would be so much nicer if it actually functioned properly. This thing is not well constructed at all. The threading piece is extremely fragile and it was my experience, as well as that of several of our shop's customers, that it broke after less than 10 uses. Now I was gentle with it, and I know my customers (this group of ladies have been handstitching for decades, I know they know how to use a needle threader properly) were too, yet this thing broke.

Thinking we might have recieved a bad shipment of threaders, we called the company to let them know that, "Hey, just so you know all of your threaders broke for us and our customers, so we have reason to believe that we recieved a shipment of defective threaders. What are you going to do about it for us?" Get ready for this: They told us that they knew they were defective when they sent them out, but we're in luck because they're selling replacement cartridges for us to buy to sell to our customers at $5. Basically, in order for the $10ish threader to work like it should have when it was purchased, our customers were expected by the company to buy a $5 replacement cartridge AND the company knew about it. Pretty sneaky on Sewline's part and that's a $15 threader now! Needless to say, we didn't charge for the replacement cartridge because that's pretty bogus. 

As an idea, this product is great. If our experience with the threaders involved them being functional right out of the package, I'd give this product 4 stars, easy. But that was not the case, and so the Sewline Quick Thru Needle Threader gets:

Product Review: Heat n' Bond Feather Weight

If you do fusible applique, then at the very least you have heard of the brand Heat n' Bond, if not used it yourself. There are a few good fusibles out there on the market, and I have found through trial and error that Heat n' Bond products work the best for me. Not that the others, like Steam-A-Seam or MistyFuse, don't work well; they do, but I like the results I get with Heat n' Bond better.

Anyway, so Heat n' Bond has developed and released their response to MistyFuse and the other very light fusibles, which is their Feather Weight brand. We got it in at the shop for Carol and I, since we do a lot of applique, to test and see what we thought. Our opinions differ. I like Feather Weight, and actually I prefer it to Heat n' Bond Lite (my previous staple). I concede, however, that Feather Weight has some...idiosyncrasies. But once you know how to deal with and counteract those quirks, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to have on hand.

Feather Weight really is just that...it is light as a feather! I have a tendency to go for patterns and designs that pile layer upon layer, and so the thinner the fusible, the better. But like I said, there are some idiosyncrasies. When the fusible comes off the roll, Heat n' Bond has affixed the plastic instruction sheet to the inside (fusible) side of the roll. The adhesive is so thin that trying to pull that instruction sheet off without tearing a wide swath from the middle is both an exercise in patience and dexterity. I have found it difficult not to lose an inch or two from the end that I peel the sheet off of, but I have also found that once you get it started and it stops tearing, it can be ripped right off like usual. Also, if you pull the sheet off just a few inches past where you're planning to cut your piece off, the fusible won't tear when you go for another piece and have to tear the instructions off again.

Speaking of instructions, this is the one fusible where I do in fact follow them. You absolutely cannot use a higher iron setting on this stuff, because the fusible is so thin it'll just dissolve away if you do. It on;y takes a second or two to adhere it to your fabric, but once it's on there, it's fabulous. Because of its thinness, it's able to be repositioned on your applique. The drawback on that thinness though is that repeated ironing, when you assemble your applique, makes the fusible dissovle a little more each time so you may find your corners coming up as you stitch everything down if you're working on a more intricate project.

So with Heat n' Bond Featherweight, its assets are also its liabilities. I have found, however, that it is more beneficial than not and it's definitely a product worth giving a try.

I give Heat n' Bond Feather Weight...