Tutorial :: Water Soluble Canvas

Have you heard of water soluble canvas? It basically does the same job as waste canvas, but it works differently.

DMC Soluble Canvas is a kind of plastic, with holes punched in it. It corresponds to 14 count Aida. It comes in sheets that aren’t terribly large, to be honest, so it’s pretty expensive. Best for smallish projects so you can get more projects out of it.

You can use this on fabric where you want to add cross stitch or other counted work designs, but the fabric isn’t naturally suited to this kind of embroidery.

But because the fabric will need to be soaked, preferably in warm water, you can’t use it for all types of fabric. Rule of thumb, if you can throw the fabric in the washing machine at around 40°C, it should be ok to use it with WSC. But that’s a guideline only – I can’t take any responsibility if your favourite sweater gets damaged. ;-)

Maybe it’s a bit grandiose to call this a tutorial, because there’s not really a lot to this.

To use the WSC, cut a piece that is slightly larger than your design.
Baste it to your fabric.
Then you stitch the design.
Soak the project in warm water for 30-60 minutes. At this point the canvas should have started to dissolve and feels like jelly to the touch.
Agitate the project in the water, to help completely dissolve the WSC.
Sometimes it is necessary to soak it twice to get rid of all of it. But you can’t always tell until it is dry. If the fabric feels stiff once it is dry, that means the WSC hasn’t dissolved properly.

And that’s basically it. :-)

WSC is a great way to stitch things that need to be straight. It can be difficult to do things like cross stitching or blackwork on regular fabric, but WSC can really help with that.