A "WHAT IF" Lightbulb Moment...

Hi folks...I LOVE my Fiskars Power Punches...engineered to punch through the thick materials that most punches turn their noses up at but always felt a little disappointed that they didn't work with fabric and there's a very good reason why they don't. Unlike paper and card which is a dense compressed material...fabric is made up of lots of criss cross threads called weave and weft with lots of spaces...not visible to the naked eye...in between and therein lies the problem. I have in the past tried sticking the fabric to card...to no avail but while playing at Stitches I had one of those rare "don't come along too often" lightbulb moments...if I could find a way to fill in the pesky spaces between the threads...it might just work. I managed to cadge some glue...no disrespect to the donor but it was the runniest glue I've ever encountered which proved that any liquid adhesive would work.
For today's road test...I used my big pot of Decoart Deco-page Matte Glue/Sealer. Ranger Multi Matte Medium or Distress Collage Medium would work too but you're going to use a fair amount of glue for this process and no way was I dipping into my precious supply of Ranger adhesives. I applied the glue generously to a sheet of 300gsm card and laid the fabric on top...smoothing it out with a brayer and left it to dry then I applied a very generous layer of the adhesive to the top surface of the fabric...massaging it right down into the fibres with my fingers and going over it again for good measure with Ranger's Scaper Tool creating a barrier if you like between the threads and the punch mechanism...left it to dry overnight and voila...a sheet of fabric paper and fingers that look as though I have a serious skin disorder.
And isn't this fabric absolutely gorgeous...it came from a huge pile of the most beautiful floral fat quarters generously given to Keren...our Sewing Demonstrator to use for her Fabric Circle Cutter demos by the lovely folks at Fabric Freedom and I couldn't resist taking a "surplus to requirements" fat quarter or two home to play with...

now it's time for the "stand by your beds and don't let me down boys" Power Punch road test...

and the proof of the pudding is right there on my workdesk...loads of fabric punched shapes...a real assortment of hearts/flowers/circles and tags...big ones/little ones and the ones in between...

ready to be made into a card and it just so happens I had the perfect Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide background and some Tim Holtz Wildflowers 2 die cuts and fabulous Chatter Design Tape sitting on my workdesk...

One of the things I love about working with Fiskars is road testing new products...taking them to the limit of their capabilites and pushing the boundaries to see how they perform under pressure with different materials BUT if things go horribly wrong and they have on the odd occasion...I can always request a replacement...so a WORD OF WARNING...I would not recommend trying this with punches that are designed for lightweight card and paper only but if you happen to own some Fiskars Power Punches...go for it and have fun.

Toodle-oo for now

Hugs Kath xxx

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