Methods of Appliqué

The art of appliqué is stitching one piece of fabric onto another. Appliqué work can be done by hand sewing, fusing, or machine sewing. Hand stitching can make the work puff up, whereas fusing and machine stitching can flatten the work. There is no right or wrong appliqué method. Try all three and pick the one that works best for you. You can find patterns in stores, books, and on the internet. However, I think the best appliqué's are the ones you design yourself. No one else has them and they are original making your project even more special.

When you are first learning to sew appliqués with simple lines are the easiest to start with. Patterns and designs with details and curves can be difficult in the beginning. Stitching can be done with straight stitch, zigzag stitch, and special embroidery stitching.

If you are working with a lot of little pieces of fabric the edges may tend to fray. Try spraying a light coat of spray starch and iron the pieces before cutting them out. When sewing shapes always sew the inner curve first.

When appliquéing something to stretchy or knit fabric put a piece of backing cotton fabric on the wrong side of the knit fabric first. A good example of this would be if you are making a t-shirt quilt and appliquéing a t-shirt onto your quilt back place a cotton fabric under the t-shirt first. This will stop the knit fabric from stretching and bunching up while appliquéing it on.

Let's take a look at the three methods of appliquéing:

Fusible Appliqué

Machine Appliqué

Hand Appliqué

The fun thing about quilt appliquéing is that you can experiment with it and see what looks and works best for you. Many websites today offer free quilt patterns, beginner quilt patterns, and easy free quilt patterns. If you want to make an appliqué quilt of "a scene" and you don't have a good artist hand for drawing the scenes then here are some suggestions:

1.Have a friend who is pretty good at art draw you something, Enlarge it to the size you want your appliqué quilt to be, then have fun cutting it out and making your quilt.

2.Take a photograph that you already have and enlarge it to the size you want your quilt, copy it, then have fun transferring it to different color fabrics and fusing into a quilt.

3.Go through child's coloring books and look for art work you can enlarge, copy, and then quilt.

4.Go on the internet to Free clip art and see if there are some art works that you could use.

The ideas are endless. Appliqué quilting is just like drawing a new picture, but you are using fabric and quilting it instead!!!