A while ago Maxies2 asked me what I thought of this product, since I had just bought it, but hadn't used it yet.

Now that I have used it, I thought I would share with everyone.

I bought a book called "Fast Forward Your Piecing" that is all about how to make quilts quickly and easily with this product, and it has cute patterns, but I am disappointed.

It is very time consuming to layout all the pieces on the grid and iron them down without them shifting. Once this is done, you sew up and down every other row, then clip seams and sew your cross seams. I thought this would be a very easy process once the ironing was done. No.

The interfacing made it really hard to feed through and it left a sticky film on my machine bed that I have had to repeatedly clean with alcohol.
In addition to that, the whole thing begins to curl after you have made a bunch of seams. I actually sewed part of it to itself and had to rip out, which made more of a mess.

I followed the directions very carefully, so I don't think I missed a step. If you have tried this and didn't have to fight it the whole time, let me know.

Long story short, this made making the quilt more like work, and not relaxing at all, so I do not recommend it. I now know why I got it so cheap (for so much) on Ebay!

I think you did things right--I came to the same conclusion you did when I used it several years ago. I don't remember the name of the technique I was doing, but you cut up fabric into little squares and then sewed it back together to make a design. It was difficult to use and I didn't think it saved time or effort.

Wendy, Rachel,
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I won't be tempted to even look at this product now. I had seen it used on Simply Quilts for a water color type project. It looked interesting then but not if it's going to cause headaches. I get enough of those on my own!

Thanks for sharing this information, I was very tempted to buy some as it is shown being used on the Whims how to video on thier web site, I have a picture panel to do which is a Whims kit and they advise you to use it, saying it saves time, but as you found this not to be the case I will do it the traditional way, they made it look so easy. :?

Sounds like that icky Heat n Bond stuff........doesn't it? Thanks for alerting us to this problem. I would have tried it, eventually, now you've saved me dollars and headaches.

Big Hugs,
Sharon

Thank you for the heads up, Wendy! I seen it used a lot on Donna Dewberrys one stitch quilting and I can see from your description how it would be more of a hindrance than a help!

The fusible grid is good for new quilters and for SMALL watercolor wall hangings. My daughter and daughter in law both used the grid to make small patchwork quilts. They were both very unsure of getting their quilting 'intersections' to match up and this stuff made it a breeze for them both. I've used it for the small wall hangings with great success, BUT in making a huge quilt, it was an incredible pain. Had to do it in sections and then sew the sections together. And the part of it gunking up your sewing machine, that was sooooo true.