A fusible interlining is a base plus a hot-melt adhesive. The adhesive is not “glue on the back.” It is a controlled coating: particle size, dot pattern, coat weight, and often two chemistries stacked. Wrong coating is strike-back (dots on the face of a shirt), a boardy placket, or a peel that dies in wash.
TrimGem samples coated fusibles with the coating method on the SKU, not only the gsm of the base.
The process in one line
Base → coat → dry and sinter → cool/calender → batch. What changes is how the powder or paste meets the cloth.
Scatter (powder sprinkle)
Powder sits in a hopper, is doctored into a needle-roll, and is shaken onto the base. Infrared melts it into the fibre. Distribution is uneven. This is the low-duty / temporary fusible: craft, cheap facings, bonds you do not trust after dry-cleaning. Do not put it on a tailored front.
Powder-dot (engraved roll)
Powder is packed into the cells of a heated engraved roll. The base, also heated, picks up regular dots in the engraving pattern. Dot size is uniform; layout is a grid or a designed scatter of equal dots. This is the mid-to-high method, especially on woven bases that must stay fused. Peel is more even because the coat is even.
Paste-dot (rotary screen)
Hot-melt is dispersed in water with auxiliaries, pumped into a rotary screen, and doctored through the holes onto the base. The line dries off water, then sinters. Paste-dot is the workhorse on nonwovens and on wovens that need a specific dot. Hand can be softer than a heavy powder-dot at the same coat weight, depending on the compound.
Double-dot (why two adhesives)
Shell fibre and base fibre do not wet the same way. Double-dot lays two hot-melts: a lower layer that keys to the base, an upper layer that keys to the shell. Variants: double powder-dot, double paste-dot, and the common paste-dot + scatter (paste printed, powder scattered onto wet paste, surplus vacuumed off, then sintered).
The upper melt should flow more than the lower so it reaches the shell without the lower flooding the base (strike-through). Double-dot is how China moved thin, soft, high-end fusibles: less coat weight, less reverse strike, more even peel, steam-press tolerant, less peel drop after a second press. It needs matched pastes and powders — low-melt soft PA grades, special PES, and hybrid PES types developed for this line.
Use double-dot when the shell is difficult (slick, coated, very fine) or when the garment is a suit that cannot show dots.
Which polymer
- PA (copolyamide). Soft, elastic, dry-clean durable. Tailored outerwear default.
- PES (copolyester). Wash-durable, bonds polyester shells well. Shirts and polyester-rich fashion.
- PE / HDPE / LDPE. Stiff, wash-durable. Shirt collars and cuffs. HDPE is the classic hard collar story.
- TPU, EVA, EAA: specialty windows (low temperature, films).
A mill mark such as HDPE+PES-161 means a mixed or double-dot system at 161 dots/cm². Dot count and coat weight are as important as polymer: heavy shells often want fewer, larger dots; light shells want more, finer dots so the face does not telegraph.
Spec line
Write base (woven / knit / nonwoven), coat method (scatter / powder-dot / paste-dot / double-dot), polymer (PA / PES / HDPE / …), coat weight or dot count, and the fusing window. “Fusible, 30 g” is a weight. It is not a coating. The peel note is where that coating is proven on a press.