During this week’s sewing class we were shown some techniques and materials for creating applique, reverse applique, and free-motion embroidery.
I made this really fun applique artwork (see below for how I made this). It’s for sale in my eBay shop:
One material that was shown is dissolvable fabric. It looks like thick cling film, and I hadn’t heard of it before as I am still very new to applique and embroidery. You place the dissolvable fabric in an embroidery hoop and can then free-motion stitch designs into the material. If you go over the same lines a few times you can then cut away the excess dissolvable fabric and dissolve the rest that holds your embroidery. Then, you can apply this embroidery design onto actual fabric.
The other material we were shown is Bondaweb. This is a thin interfacing that has a paper backing on one side and a sticky side that sticks when you iron it on both sides. You first iron it to the wrong side of fabric you want to applique and leave the paper on. You can then easily cut this fabric without it warping or fraying much. Then peel off the paper and place the fabric piece where you want it to go on your art work. Iron in place. The fabrics are then bonded together and they won’t slip or warp when you stitch over them!
I used Bondaweb to create an applique design inspired by the book ‘Little Book of Tokyo Style’. I used the free-motion foot on the sewing machine. I took a few pictures during the process:
