We have been prepping for our upcoming class with the American Sewing Guild – Sacramento and wanted to share some of that with you. We are making scarves using Mokuba free lace. Mokuba free lace is a water soluble stabilizer that allows you to create beautiful lace projects. You get two sheets: one sheet is sticky, one not. For this class, we are concentrating on gussying up scarves. We have been using thrift store scarves as well as lengths of fabric (which we also found in thrift stores – it’s amazing what you can find in thrift stores! More on that in another blog entry). Here’s a rundown of how we go from scarf to, um, another scarf? It looks better than it sounds:
First we selected a fabric/scarf and then picked out thread, ribbon, and yarns we thought would look nice with it. We then had to make the initial cut. On one scarf we just cut across and added the lace to the bottom. On another we angled the cut, then made a curved cut on yet another another scarf, all to illustrate there are many ways to configure the resulting scarf.
Since we wanted to introduce interesting texture to the piece, we decided to make cord. This is usually pretty simple with a cord maker, but since we have now broken our cord maker for the second time (and our IT person can’t fix it), we decided to go heavy duty by using a ceiling hook as a drill bit – works pretty well!
To actually make the Mokuba free lace, you place the sticky sheet down, sticky side up and start laying out whatever you want on it. We’ve used ribbon, cord, threads, and other fabric. Once you have the look you want, you cover the whole thing with the other sheet, which will stick to the other sheet. Then you sew it all down. We’ve been using a grid pattern a lot because it makes the process of making sure you have everything sewn down pretty easy. The fun part is rinsing out the Mokuba in water. The stuff turns into a slimy-like substance that you just push off the fabric. It takes a bit of washing and squishing to get all the Mokuba free lace out, but the results are really neat.
Mokuba free lace is great to work with. It doesn’t mess up your needle, is easy to sew through, and keeps the fabric, um, stable. We are planning to incorporate Mokuba free lace into some of our clothing projects once we get a few hours to play. Stay tuned!
2 responses to “Working with Mokuba”
Gorgeous! Great idea using the drill. I’ve been workiing with the water soluble stabilizer too and have had a hard time getting it out-like your idea of just “pushing it off” to start with.
Sometimes it takes a while to get a good idea. The sticky side really sticks to fabric, so you have to rub a little harder on the fabric parts.