Hey Everyone, welcome back to Technique Tuesday.

Over the past couple of weeks I have talked about leave-in and tear-away stabilizers. I know that I said I was going to talk about wash-away stabilizers this week but I decided to wait until next week to discuss them. Today it’s about heavy stabilizers and batting.

Heavy Stabilizers

These stabilizers are quite heavy or thick and are used to create a piece which requires a lot of stiffness such as a postcard. The products come as non-fusible, fusible on one side or fusible on both sides – so many options.

They are known as Timtex or Peltex depending from which manufacture you purchase the product. Both are pretty much the same and act in the same manner.

Timtex

These stabilizers work great for creating luggage tags, ornaments and postcards.

Luggage Tag

Luggage tag

Ornament

Stocking tree ornament

Postcard

Snowman postcard

All of the above pieces only have the heavy stabilizer between the fabrics – no batting was used. Timtex is easy to draw on, cut shapes out of, stitch on and add embellishments to. The postcard is a single layer whereas the other pieces are two layers of the stabilizer.

They are also used to create fabric boxes, bowls and vases. I made a few bowls several years ago and have given them all away.

These heavy stabilizers can also be used to create pieces that are not square, such as this Santa hat. Only a single layer of stabilizer was used for this piece. The stitching is all zigzag.

Santa’s hat

Not only small pieces can be created with the heavy stabilizer but also larger pieces.

Batting as a Stabilizer

Often I will use batting as a stabilizer when I sandwich the layers together. The stitching around my appliqué design then becomes part of the quilting and can be seen on the back of the quilt. I often do this with the art quilts I create. It makes for a very interesting back especially when I use the free motion zigzag stitch.

Front view with quilt sandwich and batting as the stabilizer.

Batting as the stabilizer

Back view of the same piece.

Stitching on back of piece

Happy Quilting!