Have you tried Texture Magic?

Have you seen Texture Magic? you sew it to any piece of fabric and then steam it and it draws up and creates texture on your fabric. i bought a package some time ago and just unearthed it again today. although i am supposed to be loading a quilt today i decided to play with the magic.

Here is the package. the sheet comes 18"x47". You can get it at http://www.superiorthreads.com/    and through http://www.amazon.com/   .... it is a bit pricey....about $15-20.  i have seen a larger piece that comes about 36"x47".

The instructions say to draw lines on the magic where you will sew it to your fabric. today i watched a Patsy Thompson video where she just meandered the magic to a piece of fabric and didn't draw any lines. so, it could go either way. i intended to use the whole piece at once, so i drew lines 2" apart in each direction. you can see through it easily so i placed it on my cutting table and used a regular pencil to draw lines.

You can add batting if you want more dimension and texture to your piece. i thought i might make a bag from this so i added batting. first i laid down my fabric..wrong side up. i am using a hand dyed cotton/silk blend and i laid the cotton side up. then laid my batting on top of that and then the magic on top of the batting. i pinned it all together with many pins.

i wanted to have the silk side of my fabric on the outside for my project.

Then i took it to my machine and stitched on all the lines...doing the short side first...sewing first one direction then the other...then went the other way and also stitched all around the outside. you are stitching on the magic side...so you can see your lines....and i noticed my machine didn't want to sew on that too well. i had thread breaking issues...and no matter where i set the stitch length...they all came out small. Also in the Patsy Thompson video (found on Superior Thread's site...she showed stitching on EITHER side...if you don't draw lines you can do that.

After stitching all the lines i took it to the ironing station to steam it. you are steaming from the magic side BUT you can NOT set the iron ON the fabric. so it takes a while to hold the iron above the fabric about 1/2 inch in each spot until it does its magic. i was switching hands....think of it as arm exercise. haha   it takes a while...especially if you do the whole piece like i did. as it does its magic, it sort of curls up, so you might have to hold the fabric down a bit so it doesn't touch the iron. in the beginning, i was not impressed with what was going on. but the magic is actually happening on the other side. you don't see too much on the steaming side. here it is about half done.

It reminds me of those quilts that you make with puffy batting and make little squares...looks like waffles. LOL  the directions did say that the closer you sewed, the more it would texturize. so i might have to try it again one day and just put it on the longarm and meander or feather or something closer. when it was all done it looked like this. i found that it only pulled up so much....no amount of adding more steam made it pucker any more. i went through 3 irons full of water for the steaming. the magic stuff kind of feels different after you are done...not quite stiff but has a different hand..sort of 'plasticy'
.

Here it is all pretty and finished up. there are 2 spots that didn't seem to pucker the same as the rest and as i said...no amount of resteaming changed anything. after finishing, the piece came out 16"x39"..so i lost 2" on the short side and 8" on the long side.

And here's more of a closeup. if i were to cut this and use it in several projects or as an applique or something smaller...you would want to stitch around your piece before you cut it out...otherwise you would lose the 'pucker' on the edges once you cut into it.

Had i found and watched Patsy's videos BEFORE i tackled this, i would have put it on the longarm and stitched it out differently instead of squares and i would have liked it even more. but that playing is for another day. I don't know how i can train myself to think things through first and research for days....as my sister and husband do....i just have to jump in and DO IT. hahahahaha

I really need to go load that quilt.