Last week, I blogged about some shorts that I had made up for a class, and of course for Rosie to wear afterwards. Now here in South Alabama, monogramming, embroidery and matching outfits are everything, and us being from the UK, tend to throw on whatever slightly matches and we’ll call it an outfit. Well, these shorts were just calling out to be made into matching sets and I really wanted to try some basic machine appliqué as I hadn’t done it for such a long time!
I bought some blank t-shirts for Rosie from a local boutique. These were a purchase where I thought that I could have probably made them but I just didn’t have the time to find the perfect t-shirt fabric, and wanted these to be completed in an afternoon. I want to show you how I created my appliqué designs on my regular sewing machine.
I started off by gathering my supplies. I printed my appliqué template shapes onto normal paper and pinned them to my transfer paper. The one I used was Pellon 805 Wonder-Under. I cut my shape out of the transfer paper.
I then placed my transfer paper onto my fabric. I made sure that the paper side was facing me and the adhesive side was on the fabric.
Using a low iron, I pressed over the transfer paper. This allows the adhesive to stick to the fabric and the paper stays on the template.
I then cut around my template so that I had my appliqué shape.
The paper part of the transfer paper then peels off, revealing some more adhesive. This is the adhesive that sticks the appliqué shape to the shirt.
I positioned my appliqué shape on the shirt and then used the iron on a low heat to stick it down to the shirt.
I also iron a little bit of stretch interfacing onto the inside of the t-shirt. This will sit behind the appliqué shape and add a tiny bit of extra reinforcement.
I changed my machine stitch to a basic zig zag and carefully stitched around the edge of my shape.
And there you go! The appliqué is nice and secure and matches perfectly with the shorts. I really think that this is a great little method to add something extra to those plain t-shirts. I know that I’ll be making many more of these.
threads + bobbins 