Product Review

I received my Mistyfuse in the mail last week. I ordered online through Valerie Hearder. After reading (and rereading) the outside package information, I determined that I would need some parchment paper before I tried it out.
Now I know why Valerie sells Teflon pressing sheets as well. Nice foreshadowing, eh?


This is one of the applique flower blocks that I chose for my Picnic Quilt. It's from Kay MacKenzie's book, Easy Applique Blocks. This one has the most pieces and I figured it would be a good one to test the Mistyfuse.
One of the selling features of Mistyfuse is that you can work 'forward' - you don't have to reverse templates or fabric to get your pieces on the right way. I traced all my little pieces onto the parchment paper (seems like there is no right or wrong side to this gem either!) I grouped the pieces together by the colour fabric they were going on. Then I cut them off in strips.

The directions say to use a white pencil when the pattern will be going onto dark fabric. I tried using this grey quilter's pencil and it didn't work. So the stems will be going on with Heat'n Bond lite. *After I also had no, to very faint lines transfer on my purple fabric, I realized that I could just leave my parchment paper on until I cut out the shapes.*

If you fall in love with this stuff (and I am definitely infatuated) you may want to buy stock in a parchment paper company! You use lots - underneath to iron, to trace your pattern onto, and ON TOP to press. But using it keeps the oozing fusible off your iron. And ironing board.
You can see here the faint pencil lines that transferred. And the fusible is quite sticky. This is operator error - that means I didn't have the heat right. It needs to be a fairly quick press and not too hot. (FYI - don't print inside your pattern with pencil. I did this on a yellow piece and it transferred! Nicely too:))

Here's my strip of pink pieces with the parchment removed. You can see the far left is the ideal - well transferred pencil lines and no stickiness. So, there is definitely some 'play' involved in getting used to this product. But I didn't make as big of a mess as with other fusibles.

Work in progress. One problem I am having - which may be operator error again - is that I have chosen a lighter weight fabric for the background than the applique. I am finding some rippling of both fabrics when fusing. I plan to reread my heat instructions and see if I can resolve this.

As well, if you enlarge the photo, you can see that 'thrifty' me tried to reuse some parchment when pressing and now have some shiny fusible spots on the blue circle. Much of it did scratch off when it dried, but it has left its mark. Unfortunately I am using from my stash and have limited amounts of the background fabric so I will have to leave it 'as is'.

The block is fully assembled. As I used the heat correctly - low heat for transfer of mistyfuse to fabric, high heat for fabric to fabric - the process went better. I also started to cut my parchment paper closer to the size of what I was fusing. Less waste!


Happy flowers all dressed up with machine blanket stitch!
I did find the stitching easier on this block than the one I did with Heat n Bond lite as the fusible.

Although I didn't think I could feel much difference, the Mistyfuse block did slide under the needle smoother.

With 2 more blocks to go I will be using the Mistyfuse for two good reasons: I don't have to think backwards, and ease of machine quilting (where I need all the help I can get!)

Sew Enjoy some applique,
Sarah Vee