Stabilizer & Fabric Matching Guide

This stabilizer and fabric matching guide will help you make the right stabilizer choice based on the weight, quality, and type of fabric that you are using.

When fabric is produced, manufacturers don't anticipate that anything will be added to it. When we're adding the weight and tension of thread and stitches to fabric, that fabric needs to be made stronger and more "stable" with stabilizer. If the fabric isn't stabilized appropriately, you can experience many headaches, such as poor registration, design segments not lining up, density problems, puckering, gapping, and more.

There are a few rules that can be summarized here: The heavier the fabric you have, the lighter the stabilizer you need. The weaker/lighter the fabric you have, the heavier stabilizer the you need. One layer of stabilizer is appropriate for 99.9% of projects, and two pieces of tear-away stabilizer is not a good choice when the fabric is best served by one piece of cutaway.

If you are sewing on a flimsy fabric with a stabilizer that is too weak, you'll see gapping, poor registration, puckering, and other embroidery "nightmares."  Conversely, if you are sewing on a heavy fabric with heavy stabilizer, the result will be bulky, and you're making the machine and needle work harder than what it needs to.

Avoid embroidery headaches -- choose the right stabilizer every time with this guide!

If cap, and cap has buckram, then no stabilizer necessary

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