Skip to main content

DIY Fabric Spray Starch

Around this time last year I was in the sewing room a lot using a lot of fabric starch to get the fabric nice and crisp for sewing to get the best possible seams.  After buying a couple of bottles of Best Press fabric starch (around $7.00 for a 16oz bottle) I decided that there had to be a less expensive way to get the results I wanted.  So I called on every crafty (and not so crafty) gals trusty old friend Pinterest.
Typed in a few key words...

Starch
Fabric starch
Diy spray starch
Diy starch

And before I was sucked into a wormhole that has me completely sidetracked I found several home recipes for what I was looking for.  There really are a lot some using corn starch some using vodka.  I went with one of the many with vodka in it.  No not because I wanted to sip it occasionally.  But mostly because I didn't believe it would work.
I made a trip to the local spirits store and got the cheapest bottle I could find (less than $7.00 for a small bottle) and returned to make up some of this wonderful concoction the ladies in the quilting blogs were raving about.

Mixed up a small batch to test it out.

1 part vodka
3 part water
a couple drops of essential oil

Made a super small batch enough to fit in a 20 ounce water bottle.
Took this to the sewing room and went to work on some fabric. 
What AMAZING results!!
Yes that's right it worked as well as any store bought spray starch.

What it didn't do:
It didn't stink like alcohol.
It didn't leave flakes on the fabric.
It didn't cost a ton of money.

I kept the small bottle of vodka in the laundry room and would mix up a small batch when I ran out in the sewing room.  I just last week used up the last of that bottle.  It lasted just under a year.  Did you catch that?  Almost a years worth of spray starch for just under 7 dollars.
I knew I needed to make up some more so this week I went to the store again and this time I picked up a much larger bottle (for 13 dollars) and made up a gallon of spray starch.  I use lavender essential oil in mine because I like that scent.  This gallon will last geez who knows how long and when it runs out I still have half a bottle of vodka to make up another gallon.  So $13.00 for what will seem like a never-ending supply of quilting spray starch.

Hope you enjoy this tip and if you try the diy starch recipe please come back here and let me know how it worked for you.  I would love to hear from you.

**this could be used for any ironing not just while pressing quilt seams.  It works great on my family members clothes as well.**

Thanks for reading

always
tammyc

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Throwback Thursday

    Let me just start by saying straight out of the gate that I absolutely hate to be on the front side of any camera much less my own.  Now it isn't that I don't enjoy being in the moment, I do.  I just enjoy taking the pictures instead of being in them if that makes any sense at all.   With that said I'm glad I was on the front side of this camera this day.  I suppose all little girls dream of growing up, getting married and having babies.  I know when I was a little girl my friends and i would play house, we would more less mark of sections of the room as mine and theirs these sections would be my house or her house.  we'd have baby dolls name them fun names.  We had fun.  I don't know that I ever really thought about actually having children when I grew up.  And as I got older I remember that I didn't even want to get married when I grew up much less have any kids.  But we all grow up. And that guy comes along t...

Super sweet scrub

So the picture isn't the best, you're not looking at a wonderful back drop or perfectly packaged product for this jar of sugar scrub.  But what you are looking at is a simply wonderful homemade sugar body scrub.  I am guilty of spending more than my share of time on the ever growing in popularity website craze "Pinterest" just looking and pinning, pinning, pinning.  I asked myself some time last week "what is the point in this if I don't try some of the things I am pinning."  So yesterday I found this recipe for a sugar body scrub, it helps take off  dry dead skin and it hydrates as well. Now I know we haven't been hit with a bad winter (yet) but the air has been terribly dry and my skin is really suffering all dry and itchy.  My hands have gotten so bad that they were starting to crack and bleed around my cuticles.  So I made this scrub last night before taking my shower.  Here is what I did: Mix 1/3 cup of each in a bowl Brown sugar Regular...

A new year

Ugh!  I have started and deleted this blog entry more times than I care to admit. :)  I have so many things floating around in my mind that I want to write about that I keep jumbling them all up on the page and they are not making sense to me so I am sure you will not have a clue what I am saying...babble, babble, babble... Anyway maybe this one will work for us all. The new year.  2012  Wow.  I am getting so old, I don't ever recall thinking this far in to the future when I was a kid except maybe when I watched movies with flying cars and hoovering skate boards and such thinking it would be neat to have a flying car.  but here we are still living a pretty normal life without all that stuff. I chuckle a little when I think of all the things I enjoy, these things certainly don't "fit" the year 2012 as the movie writers would write it. Because I don't want a flying car, I think it would be fun to ride a horse everywhere or have a covered w...