Old Projects: Appliques

I had a bunch of old jeans that were falling apart at the seams (actually between the seams), but they were my favorites and new ones cost too bloody much! So I decided to patch them up with appliques.

Not sure how you're supposed to do it,, but here's how I do it (these are the directions I wrote up years ago for the "garden" jeans)

You’ll need “wonder-under” (that may be “under-wonder”, I can’t remember). You can buy it in the fabric section of Wal-Mart, or at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Don’t let them sell you any other brand – they’re all too thick. Wonder-under has a glue material on one side & a paper backing.

You’ll need fabric for the applique itself – don’t go any heavier than a regular cotton or cotton blend or it will be too stiff

You’ll need some background fabric (same type as above) – it doesn’t really end up showing, but since I was putting mine on blue-jeans, I used a plain blue fabric

1) cut a piece of applique fabric out that’s large enough for your pattern
2) iron the sticky side of the wonder-under to the BACK (wrong side) of the fabric.
3) Draw or transfer your pattern onto the paper side of the wonder-under that is stuck to the back of your fabric. Remember that the pattern needs to be a mirror image of what you finally expect to see.
4) Cut out the fabric following the pattern lines on the wonder-under.
5) Cut a piece of background fabric big enough to put your applique on, & big enough to easily move through your sewing machine
6) peel the paper off of your applique piece
7) iron your applique piece onto the background fabric

NOTE: you can build up all of your applique onto the background fabric; e.g. iron on 5 white petals and 1 yellow center to make a daisy
8) Satin-stitch around all of the applique on your background fabric with the sewing machine (satin-stitching is zig-zag stitching that’s really close together)

NOTE: be sure to sew all raw edges, because the wonder-under won’t hold up in the washing machine by itself

9) cut a piece of wonder under the size of your background fabric
10) iron the wonder-under to the back of the background fabric
NOTE: be careful that the wonder-under is turned with the glue side to the fabric – I had it upside down once, & made a mess of my iron
11) cut out your applique, carefully trimming away the background fabric without cutting through the satin stitching
12) peel the wonder-under paper off of the back of your applique, & iron the applique to a pair of jeans, a purse, or whatever
13) hand stitch the thing down (or by machine if the item will fit in – jean legs don’t fit well into the sewing machine). If sewing by hand, use hand-quilting thread so it doesn’t tangle – plus it holds up better in the long run

NOTE: to make the stems on the flower bouquet, I just glued the ribbon down with craft glue and then hand stitched it




The dog appliques are done by reducing a photograph down to just a few blocks of color, then printing it and using each of the color blocks as a pattern to trace to the back of the under wonder