Make your own freezer paper

Years ago, the early method for fusible items was the lightweight plastic used by dry cleaners. I remember all the quilt/craft show hostesses being taught how to use their precious irons to bond 2 pieces of fabric together - sometimes, it was hilarious to watch. Then came the fusible webs and look how many brands are available these days. I learned last week that using regular freezer paper to run through the printer worked much better if it was pressed on a hard surface - not the regular ironing board when I made up a batch of photo transfer fabric sheets. I use my 8.5x11inch ruler for trimming the pieces to printer size and there have been no problems. Airmail paper/vellum would be an expensive start to your method of home-made freezer paper - when the online stores do sell packages of page sized freezer paper from C.Jenkins Co. if regular rolls are not available in a certain area. It is now sold in grocery stores and Walmarts in Canada - it took a while but is half the price of the lqs. jennellh

It is now sold in grocery stores and

"NightMist" wrote:

Hi Jeanne - a roll of freezer paper in Canada is approx $4 in Walmart/ grocery stores but is $8 in lqs. I have seen Jenkins brand pages (50- heavier than regular sheets) on sale at various internet stores. Jenkins is the company which makes Bubble Jet Set for home prep of photo transfer fabric and other products. FPwas sold by the metre in various lqs around town and is still sold that way in some places - the same way that parchment paper was only available by the metre in health food stores a few years ago. I suppose that an lqs customer would buy from there if convenient - I know that I notified the owner of one lqs that Walmart price was half of theirs when I first noticed it on sale - her comment" hey, so and so, yet another Walmart price attack on our stock" - she's still selling FP for the same $8 price tag but I have noticed that when there is an 'all-store markdown sale'

- the freezer paper isn't visible. jennellh

"nzlstar*" wrote:

This thread made me wonder how much freezer paper is in Australia now, so I did a quick search. Until today I had only ever seen Reynolds available

50 sq feet roll $14 150 sq feet roll $35

Reynolds 1 metre $2

CJ Jenkins 50 sheets $14.95

Matildas 20m x 40cm $24

and from

feet roll $9.99 All of these are online so postage needs to be added. My roll is a few years old and still has plenty on it.We have changed computer paper brands and the one that we are currently using is wrapped in 'freezer paper'. Thanks Jeanne for that tip :-)

Dee in Oz

Easy. She probably paid far more per roll for freezer paper as a small independent quilt shop owner than Walmart did. Stores do get wholesale discounts for larger orders and when that's spread across thousands of stores things can get discounted quite deeply.

I suspect Walmart makes more on its $4 roll of freezer paper than the lqs does selling it for $8. I know quilt shops here don't carry it because they can't hope to compete with grocery store prices.

marcella

yea but they sell it by the yard here for iirc, NZ$1.50 how many yards on a large roll? dont know how much they sell but that looks to me like quite a big profit margin. considering if they paid, for a large roll, full walmart price of US$6 aka NZ$8 for the roll. i doubt they bought enough to get it shipped over, more likely carried it home in their personal luggage from spring or fall market which they all go to at least once a yr. i guess it helps those here that dont have a source for it. shrug, jeanne thousands of

Wear a breathing mask. I'm pretty sure some plastics put off toxic fumes when they are melted. I can't imaging doing this because of the stink of melting plastic and the mess on the iron.

Debra in VA See my quilts at

Ah, but you missed part of the trick. You use really high heat on the iron and never actually touch the plastic. I imagine that if one has a med-low power heat gun it would work much more easily. We've thought of getting a low power one for shrink wrapping soap and candles, but haven't decided if it would be worth the investment. I may give a try with the ancient Red Devil heat gun (definitely _not_ low power!) that one of the landlord's fellows left behind. I wanted to give it a go with the iron first though.

So far drafting vellum ($5 a roll for 1 foot by 60 feet) works very well with cheap trash bag plastic. I am having a hard time getting cling film to behave, it wants to scoot all over the place and jump up onto the iron. Newsprint (even cheaper at $3 for a butt end) seems to work just fine as well. Monday, I can't do much on weekends because Ash is home, I will resume my experiments and see how well it works on fabric.

NightMist

I buy a couple of different kinds of paper by the ream. None of it comes wrapped in spiffy plastic backed paper. It is either wrapped in heavy white paper or plastic with no paper.

I feel gypped. ;)

NightMist

Dee >>My roll is a few years old and still has plenty on it.We

I read that website and frankly it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

First....all plastics ARE toxic in one way or another under certain conditions.

Second......"a breathing mask" won't do you one bit of good for toxic fumes. For that you need a the proper respirator with proper filters. A mask filters some particulate matter, not fumes. What you would have to pay for the properly filtered respirator to filter these toxic fumes would buy three people a life time supply of the most expensive freezer paper you could find.

Third......if you get the plastic hot enough to melt or change shape, whether you touch it or not with a hot surface (iron) or use a heat gun, it

*is* going to give off toxic fumes, so there *is* NO "trick". What there is, is gross ignorance. Even "bio degradable plastic" gives off toxic fumes when heated enough to melt or even soften enough to reshape. Ever left a plastic bag in a closed up car in the summer? If you can smell it, those are the fumes and anything made with plastic is toxic when it reaches certain temperatures. You can have a little chat with local poison control, the fire department ( they will also be happy to explain in detail why they wear RESPIRATORS and not breathing masks) or your Haz-Mat division. They'd be more than happy to explain the details of this foolish project.

I personally think this "save a few $$" handy hint is just plain stupid and most very possibly dangerous. Good way to set off an asthma attack, damage your lungs and whether you realize it or not even your skin can absorb certain fumes and enter directly into the blood. Just because one person doesn't have immediate adverse effects doesn't mean it won't harm you, or anyone or other living, breathing creature in your home.

If you are able to use this newsgroup, you have a computer. Do some research on toxins and plastic bags.

Val

Does that mean we shouldn't use freezer paper at all? Seriously, either way you are melting plastic, generating fumes, and breathing them. I should imagine that fusibles are even worse. Basting spray, now there is a real nightmare! You want to talk about toxicity, read the label on that stuff! Hoo!

Sugar I do not want to give you the idea that I am knocking your warning. I am rather embarassed that I didn't think to include a fumes warning myself. I am however keen on Risk Awareness. Which is why I should have thought to write about fumes myself. I am a believer in look at what you want to do, educate yourself about the risks and then make decisions about the activity based on that knowledge. Risks can include toxic fumes, or it can include the possibility of bashing into a tree on a ski slope, slipping in the bathtub, walking into an airport, or any number of greater or lesser hazards.

Me, I have done enough work with fume or partical hazard to not think twice and just take standard precautions. Others are not so used to it, and thus thank you for making the warning I should have.

NightMist

Freezer paper has an inert wax coating, it doesn't react the same way as the plastic used in the DIY instructions. I seldom use basting or adhesive sprays but when I do it's outside with the wind at my back. Maybe we should all just hang canaries in cages around the house ;)

Val

Whoa! Cite please? I checked the Alcoa (Reynolds) site and all they say is plastic, too generic a term. The industrial sites I looked at talked about it being poly coated or polyurethane coated. Industrial can be way different from home retail so that may not be much help.

Now I wanna know!

NightMist prolly has resin and sawdust coated lungs from working in furnitue factories

I didn't catch the whole show and I can't even figure out what it was. A small pbs station odd ball show. She seemed to need to drive a pig suburban and felt bad about using so much fuel. I got the sense it was an environmental reason. Here is some generic info:

This comment was on another page: Because you are dealing with toxic chemicals, the potential to seriously hurt, injure, and even kill yourself and others exists. That and the time involved just seems to make me think I don't want to making it. We don't use a lot of gas so that helps though. There are limits to DIY projects for me. TAria

nzlstar* wrote: