Your guide to using Sulky Water-Soluble Stabilizers for stunning embroidery

Now that you know about cutaway stabilizers, it’s time to move to the next category: water-soluble stabilizers. These are my favorite stabilizers, and I use them a lot.

Today, I’m working with Sulky stabilizers, and I also have one from the UNIQUE brand to try. Like the other categories we discussed, there are various properties and weights, so there are many options to ensure you get one that meets your needs.

I love doing two-sided embroidery, which means the front and the back will be visible. Two-sided embroidery is common in ready-made items like garments, placemats, table runners, hats, etc. You know your friends will peek at the back, so making the back look as pretty as the front is essential! You can create stand-alone items like free-standing lace, scarves made from yarns, thread painting, and much more!

Here’s an example of some thread-painted (free motion) jellyfish. I placed a water-soluble stabilizer in a wooden hoop for free-motion thread painting. Then, I stitched the thread in a pattern that meshed the thread with itself. You can use multiple shades of thread and any pattern that you wish. Because the thread creates a tight mesh, it retains its shape when the water-soluble stabilizer is gone.

The jellyfish consists of a top and a bottom, and the loose yarn tails are positioned between the two sections and stitched together. It was easy to applique the body onto the quilt top.

There’s so much more, so let’s get started.

I started by making a free-standing lace ornament. Like the free-motion thread painting above, the free-standing lace is made ONLY with thread. There’s no fabric.

I used the Sulky Fabri-Solvy and a metal hoop. I cut a piece of stabilizer and used the magnets to adhere the stabilizer to the hoop. Yes – I also love my metal hoops! I used red thread in the bobbin to match the red thread on top since both sides of this design will be visible.

Although this stabilizer resembles a loosely woven fabric, it will dissolve easily in water.

TIP Ensure all your stabilizers are labeled. Becoming familiar with the categories, weights, and properties is essential so you don’t grab the incorrect one.

Although the stabilizer has a few ripples, the final outer edge of the stitching is perfectly aligned, so the design did not shift even with all those dense stitches. When not using the correct weight or type of stabilizer, it’s possible that the final stitches will be out of alignment with the underlay stitches. In this case, the design is perfect!

All that’s left is to trim the excess stabilizer away, rinse it in warm water, and let it dry. Leaving some stabilizer in the project acts like a fabric stiffener, allowing the free-standing designs to maintain shape.

There’s a sticky version of Fabri-Solvy called Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy, which works very well when you have an unstable fabric that will shift during the embroidery process. Denim is one fabric that I love to embroider using the sticky stabilizer.

Another reason I love this stabilizer is that it can be challenging to put ready-made items in a hoop to stabilize them for embroidery. The sticky stabilizer provides stability while floating the item in the embroidery hoop. I love this product when I’m embroidering on garments, as the garment will stick to the stabilizer during embroidery. It completely washes away, leaving no bits of stabilizer on the back of the embroidery.

This stabilizer has two sides. One side is the Fabri-Solvy, while the other has a protective paper covering the stabilizer’s sticky adhesive.

It’s easy to use. Hoop the stabilizer so the shiny paper side is up. There’s no need to hoop the fabric, which is a massive benefit because many items just can’t be hooped.

Take a pin and score the paper, carefully, not to cut the sticky stabilizer beneath.

Remove all the paper inside the hoop, exposing the sticky adhesive.

Mark the registration marks on your project.

TIP It’s a great idea to print a copy of the embroidery design on paper to help with the positioning. I like to use the Clover WHITE Chaco-Liner for marking.

Then, align the chalk registration lines with the horizontal and vertical notches on the embroidery hoop. Once the registration marks are aligned, press your item to the adhesive. You can lift the project multiple times, and it will continue to stick to the adhesive in its new position.

I basted around the hoop to provide extra stability, but it’s unnecessary. I’ve used the sticky stabilizer to hoop many hard-to-hoop items, like bowls made from clothesline, purchased placemats, plastic table mats, and much more! I’ll only baste if the holes from the basting stitches will disappear.

Then stitch.

TIP When working with a two-sided project, be careful with the density of your design, which may not look nice on the other side if it’s too dense. This design is relatively open and will look just fine on the inside of the shirt. The color of your bobbin thread can also make or break the look on the back of the stitch-out.

I removed the basting stitch and took the stabilizer (and the garment) from the hoop. Remove the excess stabilizer before rinsing. This stabilizer resembles fabric and needs to be cut, which is easy enough to do with duck-billed applique scissors.

Be VERY careful when you do this. The stabilizer is still very sticky; putting a tiny snip in the fabric would be easy. Slow and steady.

I could go in closer and remove more, but I’ll leave it like that. It’s best not to tempt fate! Since there is a fair amount of stabilizer, I’ll rinse it with hot water, but it’ll require a good wash to remove the excess. Too much of the stabilizer down the drain could cause problems, so if you’re uncomfortable, you could always soak it in a bucket to remove most of the excess and dump the water outside. Even if all the stabilizer is gone by rinsing, I like to wash garments to remove this stabilizer completely.

And there’s the shirt. It looks amazing! I can’t wait to wear it!

Now let’s move on to water-soluble stabilizers with a completely different texture. These stabilizers resemble plastic film and come in a variety of weights. We’ll start with Sulky Super Solvy.

I had a napkin that I wanted to do some stitching on, but I did NOT want any paper-type stabilizer on the other side, so it’s a perfect candidate for a water-soluble stabilizer. I put a layer of Super Solvy in the metal hoop and then used the magnets to secure the stabilizer and the napkin.

Oh my gosh! It turned out beautifully. I was genuinely impressed; even with the satin stitching, there was zero puckering! I sent this to my daughter, who is getting married next year. I love the design and the quality! Am I looking for more work?

Now, an interesting thing happened. I didn’t have time to deal with some of these samples for about ten days, so they sat on the table with the water-soluble stabilizer exposed to the air in my basement. Be very careful, as water-soluble stabilizers are sensitive to humidity.

The fabric started to ripple because the stabilizer started to shrink as it interacted with the air! WOW!!!

TIP Store ALL your water-soluble stabilizers in a closed zipper bag. Keep the labels with the products, as they are hard to identify once they are out of the package!

This stabilizer resembles a plastic film and is easy to tear away along the edge of the satin stitch along the outside of the motif. The bits left inside the loops will rinse away with water.

Here’s the back of the napkin. I have to say the stitching is impressive, and there is ZERO stabilizer to pick out since I’m using water-soluble. It pays to determine which stabilizer works best for the job, even if it might cost a little more. The results are worth the extra.

I used Sulky Super Solvy for the napkin, which was very stable. Sulky Solvy also looks like plastic film but is lighter in weight.

For this sample stitched on fleece, I used Super Solvy in the metal hoop and Solvy as a topper. The topper is placed on top of the fleece to help get clean, crisp edges around the embroidery. Although the excess stabilizer is gone, some of the stabilizers remain beneath the stitches. A quick rinse will remove that.

It looked like this before I removed the Sulky Solvy from the top. I basted the Solvy to the fabric so I wouldn’t have to babysit it while it was stitching. Removing the basting stitches from the fleece is easy enough, and they will disappear.

Here’s another sample where I used the UNIQUE Trace-Away, a lightweight stabilizer on the bottom, and the Super Solvy on the top. Look at how crisp the stitching edges are once the topper stabilizer is removed. Super Solvy was overkill on the top, but I was just trying different combinations.

I found the lightweight stabilizer had started pulling away from the underside of the stitching. It’s not a bad thing – it just means that the lightweight stabilizer wasn’t quite strong enough for the density of those satin stitches. That’s something important to take note of. The design still stitched beautifully, but the stabilizer may not have remained stable in the hoop if there were many more dense stitches, which would cause the embroidery to shift.

Because these designs were not intricate, removing all the stabilizers by hand was easy, and there was no need to wash the sample. I did not rinse the sample, so the water-soluble stabilizer remains under the stitches.

Now, let’s try the Sulky Ultra Solvy, a heavy-weight stabilizer. Although it’s also a plastic film, it’s very thick and works beautifully with dense designs.

I’ll sandwich some yarn between two layers of water-soluble stabilizer and make a scarf.

I started by putting a layer of Sulky Ultra Solvy in a 465 by 260 mm embroidery hoop. Then, I cut many pieces of green yarn in various weights and textures and laid them on the stabilizer. I’ll make the scarf as long as two hoopings, so I cut them to an appropriate length.

I created a grid pattern in the mySewnet Embroidery Software and stitched over the yarns. The two layers of water-soluble stabilizer secured the yarns on both sides without the yarn catching on the needle or the embroidery foot. Once the stitching was complete, I trimmed away all the excess stabilizer and cut the fringe on both sides to about 6 inches.

I left extra lengths of yarn at the start to create the fringe and only had to trim the excess yarn from the ends after removing the piece from the hoop. Keep the excess stabilizer. The lighter weights can be dissolved in water to make a fabric stiffener, which is excellent for decorative stitches, and I think it can be helpful when cutting fabric with a digital cutter. Moisten the smaller pieces of the heavier stabilizer and stick them together to create a larger piece.

Here’s a picture of it during the embroidery process on the second hooping. It worked like a charm and was easy to do! Like everything, the second hooping was much easier than the first, and there was much less waste on the top stabilizer.

Wow, what an exciting day. There are so many possibilities for water-soluble stabilizers. I love the Sulky brand as it has many weights, and the different properties make it easy to find one that works for your project.

As mentioned, this is not a scientific experiment – that would take days. But I learned a lot while playing.

Be sure to return tomorrow, as I’ve washed the samples and will look closely at them. I’ll discuss a final category of stabilizer: heat-removable!

Have a great day!

Ciao!!!

This is part 4 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 3: How to choose and use SULKY Cut-Away stabilizers for machine embroidery