Thread: Serrated Applique

Great tutioral and great photos and llovely applique. I'm in the process of trying to "really" learn how to do applique. I say "really learn" because what I havce been doing up to this point are large shapes with no innie points.
What type of needle do you use. Its hard to tell from the pictures because of the zoom. It looks long like a straw needle but a larger gage. I've got a love hate relationship with my straw needles, find i cant swoop the fabric with them and they bend so badly. I'd love the recomendation of a good applique needle.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! Try it out and let me know what needs to be improved or clarified.

Originally Posted by Steady Stiching

...What type of needle do you use. Its hard to tell from the pictures because of the zoom. It looks long like a straw needle but a larger gage. I've got a love hate relationship with my straw needles, find i cant swoop the fabric with them and they bend so badly. I'd love the recomendation of a good applique needle.

Steady, that's one of the great debates of the applique world, right up there with silk vs cotton thread. The needle I use is a #12 sharp, and it's actually about 1 and 3/16 inches long (I went and measured.) When I was taking a beginning applique class years ago, my teacher told us that some people use sharps and some use straw needles and had us try both. I really hate the straw needles, hate hate hate. The short thin needle is best for me. They do bend eventually, but they work great!

I use John James #12 sharp and it's the perfect needle for me. (Also silk thread; YLI not Tire. I hate Tire silk thread too, it's a snarly mess to work with.)

Thanks for teaching us. Looks great.

Thank you so very much for this tutorial. I will try it this coming week.

Originally Posted by jcrow

Great tutorial. Now I may sound "not too smart", but now how do you attach it to your fabric? At the ends of the leaves? In a little? This is new to me and I love how your leaves look and you described how to do it so well, that I think I can do it but when I want to attach it to my quilt, what then?

No dumb questions; for every person who asks there are ten wondering, so thanks for being bold and asking!

In general for applique, the fabric you are appliqueing onto is the background of your block. So you treat it like a regular quilt block, with one important exception: seam allowances. When you prep an applique piece, cut the background two to four inches bigger than you want the finished block. Then you center your design on the background fabric. I like to fold the piece in quarters and baste a line of thread on the fold lines to mark the center and the midlines vertically and horizontally.

Once the applique is done, then you cut the block down to the correct size with normal seam allowances and sew it into your quilt as you would any other block. This is because applique, especially complex applique, can draw up the background fabric with all that stitching, shrinking it.

If I was going to put this piece on a quilt, I'd trim it to size at this point with quarter inch seam allowances and sew it in. If it was a border, it would probably have some applique pieces that went over the seam lines. I'd leave enough pieces off at the edge to fiddle with those a little to get everything to fit (my applique often doesn't precisely match the pattern when it is done) and applique those last few pieces after the blocks were trimmed and sewn into the quilt.

In this particular case, the black background fabric is the quilt; I plan to use a narrow strip of batting and backing and quilt a long rectangle about 2-3 inches wide with the applique centered in the piece. Then I'll trim the black fabric down just a bit wider than the band of applique, leaving seam allowances, and machine sew it to the box lining to finish the project.

Make sense?