Quilting Gel Medium-Treated Fabric
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- Length: 423 words
- Reading Time: 3 minutes
Using materials that are archival is something that's always at the back of my mind. In the fine art world, "archival" means chemically stable, acid-free, and lignin-free, designed to resist deterioration, yellowing, and fading for decades or centuries. In a nutshell, using archival materials gives artwork a much better chance of surviving unchanged and undamaged many years into the future.
To that end, I've been thinking about how my process uses Mod Podge, which is not an archival medium. Mod Podge is a glue, and it's known to yellow after decades of time. I don't use a large quantity of Mod Podge, so I really don't know how it will affect the look of my fabrics in a hundred years or more. But if there's an alternative that is archival and sufficiently controls frays, I'm all for giving it a try.
Clear Gel Medium vs Mod Podge
In June 2026, I recorded a video for my Patreon showing an experiment in which I compared Clear Gel Medium to Mod Podge. Clear Gel Medium is essentially acrylic paint without any pigment. It is archival. But the question of whether it would prevent frays needed to be tested.
In that video, I tested several different dilutions of Clear Gel Medium and ultimately used a 3:1 ratio of water/medium to make these two little pics:
As far as cutting fabric, the Clear Gel Medium worked well. I was very happy with the results. But that's just the first step. The next test is stitching.
Dragon Claws
At the time I recorded that video, I was also in the process of preparing fabric to cut for my newest show quilt, which features a dragon. Most of the fabric I used was prepared with my tried-and-true Mod Podge, but one of the claws I prepped using the Clear Gel Medium. What a better way to compare the two different methods?
Here are the two claws in question:
This is the claw treated with Mod Podge:
And this is the claw treated with Clear Gel Medium:
In comparison, I feel both methods were successful in keeping the fabric from fraying after quilting. The Clear Gel Medium passed the test!
