Difficulty with "India" Fabric

[CAGallery]

One of our favorite fabrics over the years has been India from Framing Fabrics. We have such difficulty with it though that our framers refuse to work with it. The designers refuse to give it up so we are at war!

It seems that no matter how we apply to fabric there always ends up being ripples, if not at first then later on.

With matting we have tried dry mounting it, using wet glue and/or spray mounting. It looks good in the beginning but eventually bubbles. For wooden liners most of the time we can't even get it perfect at all.

We seem to be having more trouble with this in the past two years than ever before (been using this fabric for at least 15 years). I don't think it is our framers as we have the same crew more or less.

We really don't want to give up on this fabric as it is really special and sells so well (kind of like not wanting to give up a LaMarch frame!) Any tips would be very much appreciated.

 

[Framing Goddess]

Nothin' else looks like this fabric and it broke my heart to take the corners out of my racks, box it up and tuck way back in the storage under the eaves along with those LM samples.

edie the aintworthmyheartache goddess

 

[HannaFate]

This sounds like a problem with the fabric responding to changes in humidity. You can solve it in several ways. The simplest is to pre-shrink the fabric by taking it home, washing it in warm water, and drying hard it in the dryer. (it may run!)

If you don't want to do that, find out what the humidity level is likely to be where the finished piece will be. Mount your fabric in similar humidity.

 

[Baer Charlton]

CA, (and BTW I miss your Pirate)

India is Framing Fabrics name for a Duopone` silk.

Duo (two) pone (silk).
Unfortunately they are:

1) Two different silks

2) The one that behaves is in the weft

3) The bad seed child is in the Warp, much like certain reps.....

and of course the large heavy slubbing doesn't help.

Frank is sending me some more to play with now, but our off the top of our head thought is....

No matter wet, spray, or dry mount (which isn't) there is a certain amount of damp that creeps into the lesser polished silk and that is the in the weaker alignment and therefor as it drys, it pulls up and creates the tiny puckers.

It doesn't do this always, but enough to be irritational....... and it sells well enough to be in the "B" group, which means we keep it in the line also....

My thinking is that after it is dry, (wet mount), then go back with a flannel clothe (couple of layers of old flannel sheet....oh, right, Southern Cal.... old diaper) and lay on the mat and iron with a hand iron untill the blisters are tacked down. With the dry of the diaper and the heat reactiveness of the glue, it might just do the trick.