Interfacing and a call for ideas

Hi folks.

I am back from my travels and settling into some serious sewing.

I would like your thoughts though on interfacing.

For a long time I have been living off my stash of excellent interfacing from Fashion Supply. 

Just recently however I ran out of the lovely mid-weight fusible I use for shirts and general sewing but see from the website that they no longer ship outside of the US (why do I always find this out after I get back to Canada from a visit?)

In fact the last shirt I made for my son in California I made with some recommended woven fusible I bought at a big chain fabric store. I fused following the instructions exactly and it seemed fine.

However when I was in Nashville visiting with the kids last week (they were there for a wedding/ weekend and I went down to babysit) I did the washing and pulling everything from the dryer, which is how most families wash these days, I found that the collar had rippled and bubbled like fusible used to long ago in the olden days. I had pre-shrunk both the fabric and interfacing too.

I was incredibly disappointed, this was a gift, and I left my son with elaborate instructions on how to steam press that collar down again every time it came out of the dryer, but this of course is not reasonable - who has time to do that with a baby and a busy job?

So my current dilemma is this, since it has been so long since I have purchased garment interfacing from the store.

What is your favourite interfacing and why?

Of course I can default to a sew-in but that seems to be admitting defeat in this day and age. Incidentally I use a lot of fusible tricot with no issues.

I could try to track down another specialty supplier but that kind of defeats my mission to provide tips and help to new and returning sewists, as in my newsletter - I would like to be able to use and recommend something that is readily available.

Ideally I would love to have some samples to test and report back on - I would like to fuse, wash and dry and photograph the results. I may fire off a link to this blog post to a few suppliers and see what happens.

In the meantime I would like your help.

What interfacings do you use and why?