Appliqué

Appliqué played a big role in my sewing career many years ago. I appliquéd fronts of jumpers/sweatshirts before sewing them up; selling all but a small quantity that I kept from the time my children were small.

I am aware of copyright when using images, hence why I could never sell appliqué created from images from children's books. They were fun to do for my children though.

I also did commissions as well with customers coming to me with an idea of what they wanted. Drawings were done and approved and then it was down to sewing business. I stopped counting the garments once I had reached one hundred. I often wonder if any of them were kept by their owners.

The process of these appliqués is done by drawing on a tear-away stabilizer, then baste it onto the wrong side of the garment fabric. I then pin around the drawn shape so that I can see the pin line on the front of the fabric. The pins are then used to guide me where to place my appliqué fabric so that I have less waste. Pin fabric in place then with a straight stitch, on the tear-away side, trace the shape with your sewing machine. You will then see on the right side of garment fabric, the shape of the appliqué that will then be trimmed back to the stitching. This is then finished with a satin stitch to tidy the cut edge, as well as cover the straight stitching. Once I am finished, I then remove the tear-away then sew up the garment.

Using t-shirt fabric for the appliqué fabric on fleece, I did use a light iron on stabilizer to make the t-shirt fabric easier to handle and not stretch out of shape. These garments were always tossed in the washing machine and as you can see, some are worse for wear than the appliqué itself. The garments received a lot of use.

With grandchildren now, I just may get a tutorial done for this blog in the near future.

Note: When appliquéing small areas, I build the pieces up  from back, coming forward.  An example is the arm of Popeye comes out of a sleeve, the arm does not sit on top. I build the layers so that the piece feels as if it has depth. I used terry towelling for the clowns hair so that it had more texture.

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