Terial Magic Review - Part 1

At International Quilt Festival Houston last fall I was given a bottle of Terial Magic to try.  I was excited to see how it worked.  Terial Magic is like a really, really, strong starch.  I was anxious to see how it would work on silks.  I love silks.  They are so shiny and fun, but I get frustrated when they ravel.  So...I wondered what would happen if I first used Terial Magic on them, cut them, and then did blanket stitch applique with the silk.  Here's what I found! (It was such a success...)

First, I sprayed the pieces of fabric until fully saturated.  I then dried them for about 1/2 an hour until damp and ready to iron.  I did discover that it's important to put paper underneath so dye doesn't get on your carpet (good thing I caught it fast and was able to clean most of it from the carpet!)

This is what the fabric looks like when it's been ironed dry.  It's stiff like paper or cardstock.  The smell of ironing Terial Magic was just like strong starch and not offensive to my sensitive nose at all.

I did put down an extra piece of fabric on my ironing pad before ironing so any extra dye from my dupioni silk would bleed onto the fabric instead of my ironing pad.

This particular silk is from Cambodia (a purchase from Golden Threads Silks in Houston) and due to the weave the fusible did not really want to stick to it.  I didn't have this trouble with any other silk.  However....it lead me to a question.  What if I simply glued the pieces on with a fine tip on an Elmer's School Glue bottle instead of using fusible.  I had to try out both of course!

This gorgeous coral fabric is a hand-dyed silk velvet that I purchased from a vendor from Australia while in Houston.  I know I took a picture of the name of the vendor but alas it is lost somewhere as I can't find the picture!  I really had to use a lot of Terial Magic to saturate the velvet, but it worked wonderfully.

Here is the glued block.

Here is the fused block.

Fused block finished. 

Glued block finished.

So, what is the difference?  Not a lot.  The fused block is stiff, the blued block is a little more bubbly as the fabric can move.  Are either of these things a big deal?  I don't think so.  I would use both methods again easily in a quilt.  The only thing I would note is that my silks are not necessarily color fast so I wouldn't want to wash the finished project and would keep it to a wall hanging.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy