Material and fiber questions

Translation: Embroidery silk

Sounds like a great find!

Thanks but the spools are cleary marked rayon elsewhere

Wasn't there a response to another thread about burning an end to see if was silk or rayon???

Rayon will sort of melt and silk will char and burn. It's likely what a lot of people call "Art Silk" which is usually rayon :-). CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Rayon smells like paper when it's burning, and gives a papery ash. Silk smells like burning hair, and gives a slightly different, more cohesive ash.

"Art silk" usually means rayon.

Anne,

I've not used weaver's cloth for punch needle, instead I've been using cotton fabrics in tight or firm weaves both of which have worked well for the Clover and Russian punch needles...one was a muslin and the other was a heavier piece of cotton fsbric I had laying around.

You can probably use the weaver's cloth sewing fabric too. I'm going to try out the Kona cotton brand of solid color quilting fabric next...these are 100% firmly woven cotton fabrics. I also think a firmly woven linen fabric will work very well with punch needle...the texture of woven linen would look lovely next to the fuzzy loops.

A good budget suggestion is getting remnants of firmly woven fabrics to experiment with. Our local Joann's usually has a collection of all sorts of odds & ends of cotton fabric remnants...best way to buy remnants is to check if the regular bolts the remnant is cut from is on sale...if it is, the remnant will also reflect the sale price on top of the 50% off remnant pricing. I've bought many great quilting remnants for under a dollar!!

I took a class at a local shop and the fabric the shop supplied had a tight weave that didn't permit the needle to penetrate. I have tried several cottony fabrics with various degrees of success. I'm currently in trying to do what the experts say mode and most experts recommend weaver's cloth -- time to switch modes ;-)

Been there, done that -- have a bunch of odds and ends that looked interesting ;-)

Hello Anne and Lula,

I went to a demo with Pamela Gurney from Dancing Needles at 2 different shows in Australia last year. She recommends a different type of cloth. If I remember correctly she said weavers cloth stretches more in one direction than the other.

Just went and got the package I bought at the 2nd show. She says no-stretch woven fabric with a blend including polyester are best.

The stuff I bought (and have not used yet) is polyester/viscose/flax blend.

I believe she showed us the same design done on 2 types of cloth and one of them did become elongated.

Hope this helps.

Bye for now.

Rosemary

I've wanted to visit Australia for some time to seeing the natural and man made wonders like Pamela's work andthe Country Bumpkin store.

I'm fabric illiterate and don't know what that is Can a fabric savvy person 'translate' into American English the shelf name for polyester/viscose/flax?

I'm not 100% sure on this so if any of our way more knowledgeable people want to correct this, please feel free to do so.

I believe polyester is a synthetic, viscose is rayon and flax is linen.

Lucille

Lucille you passed the Test with 100% Viscose/Rayon is also a Man made thread. hence it is synthetic as well , but some people think it is Natural . mirjam

This Reminds me ,, when they cloned that sheep in UK , jokes were going around about her Wool Being Man made Wool !!! and not natural wool. mirjam

-- polyester --

Polyester is the commonest synthetic. It has no stretch, which makes it good for climbing ropes, kite strings, and permanent-press clothing. (It can make a stretchy fabric, particularly when knitted, because the fibers can be set into permanent crimps. Compare to steel wire bent into a coil to make a spring.) Polyester gives off a characteristic perfumy smell when heated.

Most perma-press clothing contains polyester. If a poly-cotton blend is at least 60% cotton, it will look like cotton -- higher percentages of polyester make the fabric pill like crazy -- but I, at least, find even 10% polyester suffocating in summer clothes.

-- viscose --

Viscose is a type of rayon. According to Wikipedia, it's made by dissolving cellulose in lye, then extruding the thick solution into an acid bath which neutralizes the lye and turns the solute back into cellulose.

Viscose, judging by the Wikipedia article and my vague impressions (I'm not very interested in rayon except in the form of underwear that hasn't been available since the 1960s.), is the commonest form of rayon. Wikipedia says that cellophane was viscose, and a page linked from that article suggests that cellulose sponges are viscose.

Nitrocellulose was, I believe, the earliest form of rayon. Since another name for nitrocellulose is "guncotton," it was hastily withdrawn from the garment market, and nowadays only stage magicians use nitrocellulose fabric.

Other forms of rayon are cuprammonium, acetate, modal, and tencel. "Art silk" is usually rayon. (I thought it was always rayon, but Wikipedia says that other silky fibers are also sold as artificial silk.) Rayon is very useful when you want the look of silk without the expense but, in my experience, it doesn't wash worth a nickel.

-- flax --

Flax is the plant from which linen comes. The word "linen" is so often used to denote a weave which looks like cheap, coarse, low-quality linen that people who are selling the real thing are apt to call it flax so that there shall be no mistake. (Compare "dairy butter".)

Properly, linen is "line fiber". The short fibers sold as "linen" today are tow, or line fiber "cottonized" by breaking it up into tow-like pieces. (Tow is the short stuff that is rejected when preparing line fiber.) Some linespun linen is still made on antique machinery, but it's very rare and expensive.

Linen made into imitation cotton usually retains all of linen's desirable qualities except for strength, durability, and freedom from lint, but it can't be made into really-fine fabric or thread. Cottonized linen musses even more than cotton, but shirting made of a blend of cotton and linen musses very little and the wrinkles tend to hang out; perhaps it's because cotton fibers twist one way and linen fibers twist the other. My microscope is broken, so I can't check this out.

Joy Beeson

Rayon is very useful when you want the look of silk without

You might want to take another look at some of the new rayons on the market, Joy. Here in the Sticky South I have been wearing a lot of pants made of rayon challis, and tops of rayon knit (some with a little lycra, less than 5%) and they are very cool and comfortable in these unbearable temperatures. I wash them in the machine, gentle cycle, short time, and they come out looking like new.

They are actualy cooler than cotton, wrinkle much less than linen, and drape very nicely.

JMHO

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Thanks for deciphering the fabric terms, Lucille and Joy. I thought that Rosemary might have been referring to fabric blends that contained all the elements she listed. My guess is that fabrics that have a little give might work for punching.

Hello Anne,

I read offline, so I get left behind pretty easily.

The fabric I have, which I obtained from Pamela Gurney at a show, _is_ a blend of the 3 things I mentioned. I think the fabric needs comparitively little give to work best.

She also has a type of hoop she recommends, called a "lip-lock" hoop.

All for now.

Rosemary

Thanks for the additional information. She's got the fabric for sale on her web site. I've been covetting her dancing ribbon needle and if I decide to get one, I'll get some fabric at the same time.

Sounds like a good idea to me. :)

Rosemary