Hey Everyone, welcome back to Cool Tool Thursday.

Have you used fabric glue? I have to say that I never have used it until today. And well I had a few issues with the application of it. Nothing to do with the product, all to do with the operator of the product.

I’ll start at the beginning.

When I was living in Australia I went to a class taught by Helen Godden. It was a fabulous class and Helen is a marvellous teacher and artist. So I made my piece and started to quilt it. I thought boy it sure is hard to move the fabric under the foot but didn’t really think anything of it. Well, I should have because I was going through 6 layers of fabric rather than 3.

The moral of that story is – stop and look if you think something isn’t quite right. It will save you time and frustration of reverse sewing.

The quilt

I never finished the quilt. Yesterday I pulled it out of the UFO stash as I knew it needed some glue. All the pieces had been appliquéd on and over the years some of the edges have lifted.

Lifted edge

I went looking for my fabric glue and found a bottle given to me by a friend when she moved overseas. It was a bottle of Aleene’s OK To Wash-It. It states that it gives a permanent fabric bond.

After reading the directions I proceeded to turn the bottle upside down to dispense the glue onto the fabric and the lid gave way resulting in a huge blob of glue on my work. I was in a bit of a panic so didn’t take a picture of the blog but it was a good 2 inch in diameter blob.

A rather large opening

After cleaning it up I decided that maybe a Q-tip would be the best way to apply the glue to the areas needing glue.

Applying glue with a Q-Tip

You can see the glue on the black fabric where the appliqué piece needs a little assistance to stick to the background fabric.

Glue applied to fabric

It is supposed to be washable and holds it’s bond through multiple washings. I won’t be testing that as this piece will never see the inside of a washing machine.

The glue is said to dry clear and takes 24 hours to dry completely. The bottle says that it can leave a bit of a discolouration on darker fabrics. Of course the glue blob landed on dark fabrics. Keep you fingers crossed for me that it will totally disappear. Here’s what the area looks like after 12 hours of drying.

The area that had the blob of glue

That’s my story about glue – next time I will inspect the container for any unwanted openings before turning it upside down.

Happy Quilting!