Coating fabric with Tesa, book covering film, or cling film

Coating fabric made easy! In this blog post, I will show you my attempts to coat fabric using adhesive tape, book covering film, and cling film.

Key takeaways at a glance

• There are many methods for coating fabric yourself; I will report on three different possibilities here
• I tested whether cotton fabric can also be coated and made wipeable with adhesive tape, book covering film, and cling film
• Coated fabric for bags and accessories is so practical, and it's even better when you've coated the fabric yourself
• You can find other tests and options for coating fabric on my blog

Coating fabric: Adhesive tape, book covering film, cling film

Coated fabric for bags and accessories is so practical! How much better is it when you have coated the fabric yourself?

So, I tested whether cotton fabric can also be coated and made wipeable with adhesive tape, book covering film, and cling film.

Be sure to also read my tutorial on how to easily make your own oilcloth with beeswax!

Here are my tests!

Coating fabric with adhesive tape

Of the three variants, this was the simplest: it was quite easy to apply the adhesive tape to the fabric.

Then I placed the prepared fabric between two layers of baking paper and ironed it at setting 3.

The result looks like this:

My conclusion:

Better stay away from coating fabric with adhesive tape. It goes wrong.

Coating fabric with cling film

Next attempt. This time I used two layers of cling film:

Again, placed the fabric between two layers of baking paper and ironed at setting 3. And I kept going until the film was firmly bonded to the fabric.

Doesn't look too bad.

I am doing the water test, which you already know from my first coating article.

After a short time, the back of the fabric is damp:

My conclusion:

Already better. But not yet optimal. The colors suffer somewhat from the coating.

And it remains to be seen whether, for example, a bag sewn from such coated fabric can be turned inside out cleanly. The coating might peel off in places, making the whole thing fit for the trash can.

Coating fabric with book covering film

Same fabric, different film. This time I'm trying it with self-adhesive book covering film.

It works like this: I stick a layer of book covering film onto the right side of the fabric.

Carefully peel off the backing paper and smooth down the film. Stick it onto the fabric without wrinkles if possible.

And again: place the prepared fabric between baking paper and iron.

It really takes a long time before anything happens:

After a few minutes of slow ironing at setting 3, I notice that the plastic is starting to soak into the fabric. After about 10 minutes:

If I had ironed even longer, the plastic would have completely fused with the fabric.

You can see that quite well in the photo: In the matte, slightly darker areas, the plastic has really soaked into the fabric.

I'm doing the water test again:

And look at that: TipTop - the coating holds!

My conclusion:

That worked better. But this method isn't exactly optimal either.

1. It smells strongly of plastic when ironing - the fumes produced are certainly not very healthy
2. It takes a lot of time and patience to coat large pieces of fabric this way
3. During my attempt, there were slight scorch marks on the fabric due to the heat of the iron - my fabrics are simply too precious for that

My test result

Coating fabric with adhesive tape is unfortunately not an option at all. Even though the idea is somewhat appealing. It simply didn't work.

Fabric coating with cling film, on the other hand, works a bit better. Unfortunately, it still doesn't look great - and waterproof is something else entirely.

I liked the coating attempt with book covering film^* best. At least the result. However, I don't like the plastic fumes.

I think you can get a far better result with, for example, Odicoat Gel^*. It is much easier, faster, and less nerve-wracking. The gel comes in a small jar with a card for spreading it onto the fabric.

I'll show you exactly how that works in this tutorial on Odicoat coating.

Do you like my coating test?

Then don't forget to write a comment :)

Happy simple sewing,

yours Sabine

Common questions answered at a glance