Raw Edge Applique Session 1: Overview & Supplies Needed

One of the fabulous things about applique, whether it's by hand or by machine, is that it gives you total freedom to tell the story that you want to tell with fabric and thread. And I know that total freedom kind of freaks some people out and you think, "Oh, I really need a pattern." Then that's great. Try a pattern. If you see a pattern that you really like the shapes of, take that pattern, use those designs, but use the techniques in this class to explore different ways of putting down those designs. If you don't want to use somebody else's pattern, then there's lots of ways to get your own ideas, your own patterns or designs down on fabric.

You can use a flower that you've seen on a garment or wallpaper. You can use a design that's on a tile. You can use designs that are in copyright-free books, such as the books by Dover. Dover Publishing puts out all these wonderful design books that have just black line drawings of pretty much anything you can imagine from dinosaurs to botanicals and they're a great thing to use for applique designs. You can also use children's coloring books.

They're great because the designs are simple and they're copyright free also and you can expand those and make them smaller, and you can just really have a lot of fun with simple shapes in applique. I am not a good drawer but I've always drawn my own things for applique. I've just used really simple shapes that I can use over and over again. So when we look at this flower here, it's just one petal and I've just used that petal five times. I just cut a circle for the center.

It's nothing complex. But what I did with the stitching makes it much more interesting. So instead of just top stitching, I added some extra lines. Now, is this a realistic flower? No, this is an op art flower, but that's what I wanted was an op art flower.

So you decide what it is you want and decide how realistic you want it to be. Here I just wanted, again, something op arty and I wanted these circles, these hollow circles, to look like they were either on these sticks or floating around those sticks. And again, this is just simple top stitching done during the quilting. And that's one of my favorite things to do is to applique as I quilt. Some people call that appliquilting, which I love that term.

Whereas this one was stitched before the quilting. And this is a buttonhole stitch or a blanket stitch done on the machine. One of the reasons I like this stitch the most is because it puts a fine line of thread right on the raw edge and really kind of hunkers down that raw edge. And so this is very launderable. But my absolute favorite, cause it's my favorite in anything I do, is this freestyle applique.

And what's so fun about this is that nothing is put down beforehand. You just layer up your quilt ready to go and then you just add pieces of fabric, stitch, and then cut away the excess. And so it's very, very freeing and very, very fun, and we're gonna do this technique too. So to do these things what we need is some fabric for our motifs, our motif is the thing that we're appliqueing down, and a background fabric. And then two very important pieces of equipment, if you will.

And the first is iron-on adhesive. So there's tons of different iron-on adhesives out there and what you want is something that's lightweight and preferably something with a backing. So this is a paper backing. Now, generally speaking, my favorite iron-on adhesive is Mistyfuse, but it doesn't have that paper backing. So when I do this technique I go to the ultra light Wonder-Under.

And the reason I do that is because I don't want any stiffness to my applique and I want it to iron very easily. One of the hardest things about using iron-on adhesives that you're going to stitch through is that if you don't dissolve that adhesive entirely, then it makes your needle on your machine sticky. And so the lighter weight it is, the easier it is to get that iron-on adhesive entirely dissolved on the surface and then the easier it is to needle through. So look for titles when you're looking at your iron-on adhesive that say light weight, and that's the one you want to go with. But make sure it has a paper backing because that makes the design process easier.

Then you're also going to need an iron-on stabilizer. Now, this is important for the techniques that aren't going to be done during the quilting, and we're doing three before the quilting and three after the quilting, or during the quilting. So we're only using this for the ones that we're not quilting on at the same time. This is a also medium to light weight, preferably medium. And generally, unfortunately, the products say light to medium or medium to heavy.

And if you have to choose the two, from the two, and there isn't one that just says medium, then choose medium to heavy, okay? This one's to give some stability to your piece and you actually need a good deal of stability for this technique. So this is an iron-on non-woven, and in this case, permanent stabilizer. Now you can choose tearaway, You can choose cutaway. But because I'm gonna machine quilt everything, I'm just leaving mine on.

If you're gonna go in and hand quilt around something, then you do not want this stabilizer in there. But if you're gonna machine quilt the whole thing anyway, you don't have to have a tearaway, and that's one less step that you have to do. So it's a non-woven iron-on stabilizer, they call it interfacing, and we're gonna put it on the back of all of the blocks that going to be stitching on. Now one of the most important things that I can teach you about this technique is to minimize your iron-on adhesive as much as possible. So these are the designs that we're gonna be working with today.

And the first is this big freeform flower. Now neither of these are realistic. This is not what I'm going for. And when you're practicing, when you're learning these techniques, choose simplicity first. Later, if you want to make a very realistic iris, and you want to play with the coloration, and you want to play with the shading and all that, that's great, but learn these techniques first.

Get down this methodology before you start playing with the tough stuff, the shading and the realism, if that's something that you wanna do. So this is a very, very simple flower, some very simple leaves to go with it, the flower center, whereas here we have a flower that is a little less simple. It's got three different petals, two that are directional, and then one that you use over and over that's non-directional. You could just use this petal. You could just use that petal.

You could just use those two petals. It's up to you. Then a couple of leaves and a center. So these are things for you to play with. The nice thing is, is that these can be traced without having to be cut out or anything.

So once you print it, you don't have to cut them out. You simply lay your iron on adhesive on top of the pattern and trace it. So you're just gonna trace. So this is my iron-on adhesive and I have traced on the paper side. Then I'm going to cut it out, but I'm gonna cut it out more than you normally do.

All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come around and cut out around that outside edge, not directly on that outside edge because I'm gonna do that once the fabric's on it and there's no sense in doing that exact cutting twice. And once that's done, I'm then gonna go in here and I'm gonna cut away all the center part. So you can see that here. I've got my line that I'm gonna be cutting the flower on and I've cut away all this excess. What this does is lessens the amount of iron-on adhesive on there and then once I do all my quilting I'm gonna have some nice fullness inside that applique instead of that really flat look that happens when everything's ironed down.

And if I were doing layer upon layer of things on top of this applique, it would start to get really, really dense and really, really thick. And I don't want that to happen. So I always hollow out my shapes, whether it is a small leaf or a big flower. The final applique that I put down on a layer I generally don't hollow out. So this is my final one that's gonna go down and it's my flower center.

So now I've already cut out the leaves. Now I just need to cut out this flower and then we'll do some ironing. So now's the time that I'm gonna cut out directly on that line. And the nice thing is, is that if it's not exactly like this flower, it doesn't matter because it doesn't have to fit into anything. So if I'm a good cutter outer and I managed to stay directly on that line, great.

If I don't stay directly on that line, nothing wrong with that either 'cause there's no right or wrong. And for me, that's freeing. For some people, again like I said, that freaks you out. And if you want to be quote/unquote perfect, go ahead. But if you want to just make some funky flowers, then just make some funky flowers.

Now, when it comes to placement, I have cut 12-1/2-inch squares. And the reason I cut 12-1/2-inch squares is because often a quilt maker uses 12-1/2-inch squares in their quilting. So I will have these squares. They all have the same background fabric. And if I want to use them in a quilt, then I can.

Also, I like 12-inch pillows. So a 12-1/2-inch square is great for making a 12-inch pillow. So I don't have to just have little samples laying around. I can actually finish them into something. So that's always a nice option.

So I've got my iron on. And you want to follow your iron-on adhesive's instructions for how it gets heated. Some require steam and some do not. I've got my background fabric. I have a piece of iron-on stabilizer.

And I'm gonna be ironing all of these things down. So you can see here when I remove that edge that you can actually see the iron-on adhesive. So we've got this little fine line of iron-on adhesive around that outside edge, which is exactly what we want, no more. Put that adhesive down. And I get my paper backing off of all of my shapes first so that I can then play with their placement.

As you tuck things under, cutaway excess. So if something is gonna go under something else and there's about, you know, anything more than 1/2 inch or so under there, make sure that you cut that away so that you can't see it through it or feel it through it. So I've got three leaves and my flower. I'm gonna go ahead and position my adhesive side up, stabilizer, and take the flower and decide where I want to put it. Now, some people would want to put this right smack dab in the center, but that's not what I want to do.

I always want things a little asymmetrical, so I've put it off center. You can do whatever you want to with your flower. And then I'm gonna position my leaves. Now you want to make sure that you have at least 1/2 inch on all sides where your applique does not penetrate. And I think I'm gonna put two leaves together there maybe and then one leaf down here.

I like that. And then my flower center. Now I'm going to investigate and see how far under this leaf is. And I can see that it goes all the way there. I can actually see its outline and I really don't want that happening.

So I'm just gonna trim it a bit so not so much of it is under my petal and that most of it's gonna be right under the edge that's a be stitched down. And I'm gonna kind of play with the positioning of that leaf. There we go. This one doesn't need any trimming. It's just right underneath there.

I like the position of my center now. And now I'm simply going to iron it in place. And when I say simply, what I should say is I'm going to really do a good job of ironing it in place because I don't want to have any of those edges loose and I don't want to have any of it come up or lift up during the stitching, and I don't want any undissolved or unmelted adhesive. So we're gonna set that iron down and really, really give it some good heat. Now, this is one of those irons that likes to turn itself off when it's not being used, so it's gonna take a minute for it to heat back up.

And you can see that I'm ironing that iron-on stabilizer on the back at the same time. So everything's getting ironed down. Once this is done, we'll be ready to do some stitching.