Once you have your appliqué shapes ready to go as shown in a previous blog entry, the only thing left to do is stitch it to your background fabric.
1. Cut the background piece of fabric slightly larger than it should be. The appliqué stitches may cause your fabric to pull in or distort. Once the appliqué is stitched into place and pressed, you will go back and cut the piece to the exact size needed.
2. Press the background fabric in half each way using the creases as registration lines to help with positioning the appliqué pieces.
3. Position the appliqué pieces according to the pattern. Using a fabric glue stick, glue the shapes into place. If your design will be multi-layered, first position and glue the shapes that will be directly against the background. There are other ways to baste the shapes in place (hand or machine basting with thread), but I would recommend using a water soluble glue stick (pictured later in this article); it is really fast and easy.
4. Test several stitch lengths and widths of your sewing machine’s zig zag stitch along with different threads to find a combination that is pleasing to your eye. It’s a good idea to write these specifications down. On this particular project, I didn’t want the appliqué stitches to be noticeable, so I made them very tiny (width set at 1.0 at length set at .8) and I also used monofilament thread. Also select a presser foot that will give you the most visibility.
5. Begin stitching by positioning the needle to enter the background fabric only, right next to the appliqué shape. It is very helpful to set your needle to the needle-down position. Hold the thread tails securely as you start to stitch. After entering the background fabric, the needle will swing towards the appliqué shape, taking a little “bite” into it. Go slowly. As you begin, you may only want to take one stitch at a time until you’re comfortable with the movement of the needle and can position the fabric under the needle effectively. Here are some close ups pictures: first of the needle going into the background fabric only, and then the inward swing of the needle into the appliqué piece.
6. Continue stitching around the shape, repositioning the fabric frequently so that the stitches remain perpendicular to the edge of the shape. If you have a knee-lift attachment for your sewing machine, it’s the perfect opportunity to use it here. It is so helpful to keep your hands on the fabric moving it slightly between stitches while your knee raises and lowers the presser foot.
7. Pull the threads from the starting and stopping point to the back and make small knots to finish a line of stitching.
8. Add additional layers of the design, if applicable. For my particular project, the base layer is shown first. The next photo shows the centers of the flower that I appliquéd together first before attaching it to the flower petals.
9. Press finished appliqué face down against a plush towel to remove all wrinkles.
10. Cut the finished piece to its exact size.
Additional tips: Use a size 70 sharp needle. The smaller size will leave smaller holes and give a cleaner look to the appliqué stitches.
Starch the background fabric until it is stiff before basting the appliqué shapes – this will eliminate the need for a stabilizer in most instances.