Puff vs Craft Foam???

AJST · August 26th, 2011, 05:50 AM

I like trying new things and a little while ago I began playing around with puff. I like the 3d effect that puff adds to the design, but at two to three dollars a sheet it can cause a little wallet shock.

I was walking around Wally World (Walmart) and happened across this wonderful stuff called Craft Foam. 50 sheets of 6 by 6 foam that looked just like Puff and the whole stack cost about 6 dollars. I took it home with me and put it on a hat. Mama always told me that if it looks like puff, acts like puff, and smells like puff, it must be puff.

My question is this... is there a difference in Puff and Craft Foam? Any thoughts?

widners · August 26th, 2011, 08:14 AM

My understanding is that it isn't as dense as the puff made for embroidery. I have experimented with both and I will give my feedback below. Keep in mind that I would imagine that craft foam differs greatly from brand to brand so the brand you try vs what I tried may be a world of difference.

1. Embroidery foam seems to "rebound" when pinched, it doesn't seem to have as much memory as craft foam. I noticed this when I ran caps on craft foam it looked like it was pressed down and not as thick as my embroidery foam. I went to both and pinched a corner, embroidery foam immediately rebounded and came back to its original thickness, craft foam stayed compressed and slowly eventually came back to its original thickness. It was a minor difference and a customer probably wouldn't notice but I did when I ran both kinds side by side.

2. In my opinion the high density foam makes for a cleaner tear. The embroidery foam I used was a higher density than the craft foam and it tore much cleaner than the craft foam. The craft foam left a lot more fuzzies that needed to be cleaned up with the heat gun.

I buy the big sheets of embroidery foam myself but I know others regularly use craft foam and they like it. Again, I think it has a lot to do with the brand of craft foam, I think if I could try some other craft foam brands they may work better.

AJST · August 26th, 2011, 06:22 PM

Thanks for the info Widners. I will have to look at it a little more closely. I have done a few hats and shirts with them and been happy with both the craft foam and the embroidery foam.

I guess the main thing I was curious about is there is any ill effects using craft foam on clothing that is washed or dried regularly. I wondered if the foam shrunk or something like that.