Attacking applique! Part I

What is applique?  A quick search on Google defines applique as "a decorative design made of one material sewn over another."  Sounds pretty simple, right?  However, when people see appliqued pieces, if they have never tried applique before, some of them will automatically cease their interest in the design, because applique looks difficult.  Plus, you have to cut out all of those little pieces, and then you have to somehow stabilize them and attach them to another piece of fabric!  Thus, many people who might enjoy making, or at least owning, some form of applique, will never realize their greatest dreams!  Perhaps that is too dramatic.  However, applique can be really fun, and easy as well.

I have only done two types of applique myself, and I know there are various other ways to do it., depending on what you want the finished project to look like.  I suppose, I've actually done two and a half, since the first time I ever really did applique I didn't realize I was doing it, and likely didn't do it right.  I'm going to talk about the methods that I've used in a couple of different posts, so I don't totally overwhelm you with a novel-length blog post.

This was an apron, made from Nancy Halvorsen's  "I Believe" book from 2009.  All of the pieces attached to the apron, made from a towel, are raw edge applique pieces.  This uses a fusible paper to stick the fabric together; I used Steam a Seam 2.  With this fusible, one side is sticky, and the other side is the fusible side.  Both sides have a thin paper covering.  When using it, you will take the applique design included in whatever pattern you're using, and lay the Steam a Seam over it.  Trace the design onto the paper.  You want to make sure that you are tracing it on the paper covering the fusible side, rather than the sticky side, which will have the paper taken off before you stick it to the applique piece.  Once you've traced the design, you peel the paper off the sticky side, and place that on the fabric.  For example, I traced the Santa beard onto the paper, with the sticky side that would be attaching to the beard fabric face down.  Then, I peeled the paper off of the sticky side, stuck it to the beard fabric, and then cut around the fabric and fusible on the line I had just traced.  You do this for each individual applique piece.  This is the longest part of the process.

Once the pieces are cut out, you start ironing the pieces to the base, in this case, the towel.  I first laid the green circular base behind the Santa on the towel, and ironed it on.  I then laid out the pieces that would be a part of the next layer, which were the hat and shirt.  These then got ironed on.  Then I ironed on the face, then the moustache and hat band, and finally the holly leaves.  You want to make sure the iron is hot, but not too hot, because since you will be ironing over and over things, you don't want to get scorch marks.  I've done that, it doesn't really add a whole lot to the project! :)

After you iron the pieces on, which takes very little time, you are so close to being done!  At this point, I added some decorative buttons.  You can be finished the applique portion of the project at this stage.  I prefer the look of a more finished edge, so I handstitched using a blanket stitched around each of the applique pieces.  This was time consuming, but I'm really happy with how it made the finished project look.  You could also stitch around the pieces on a machine, which would take much less time.  Here is the finished apron:

 

So, raw edge applique is really fast, and really fun.  It's a great way to do a project like this, where you want to get a nice looking design in different fabrics.  Hope you try it very soon!