I will be off-line for a week or so to spend time with my lovies, so one last time before the New Year, here is a little tutorial.
Here is the very first Reverse Machine Stitched Applique Christmas stocking that I ever made. I needed to make a new one, so I cleared off a little spot on my work table and assembled my supplies:
Supplies needed:
- Scraps of fabric – quilting cotton, tightly woven is best.
- Scraps of batting
- Tear-away interfacing
- Background fabric
- Thread
Chose design and transfer to tear-away interfacing.
Trace your design onto the tear-away interfacing. I drew a little mousey with a Santa hat and traced it onto the tear-away with a permanent marker.
I drew three of them onto the tear-away. Cut away the tear-away leaving a broad 1/2″ around the figure.
Decide how to layer your design applique.
As with any type of applique, decide how the fabric will layer and work from the fabric furthest in the background to the front. With Ms. Mousey, her body is the base, the Santa hat is on top of that, and the hat brim is on top of that.
Pin the fabric scraps and batting scraps for the first layer to the front of the base fabric.
For the first mousey, I used a pale gray scrap for her body. The fabric scrap should be slightly larger than the design. Pin the fabric square on all four sides close to the edges of the fabric. This will provide a guideline to the design placement on the backside.
Flip the backing fabric to the wrong side and place your design between the straight pin markers
You can see the pin markers slightly – use these guides to insure that your design completely fits onto the fabric/batting scrap on the front.
Stitch around the design element from the back side
This was a fairly small design so I used my embroidery foot and free motion stitched around the outside of the mousey design. Do not remove the tear-away yet.
Flip the backing over and trim the scrap fabric and batting close to the stitching.
The raw edges will be covered with satin stitching, so trim very close to the bobbin stitching.
Repeat with the other scraps of fabric to fill in your design.
I added the striped fabric next as her little Santa hat, then a piece of white for the hat brim. In this case, I could layer fabric on top of the previous applique figure without cutting away anything underneath. You don’t need to add batting between each layer .
Note that the edge of the hat brim is slightly under the hat brim. Rather than try to butt the two up against each other, leave a bit of the hat edge longer so that it neatly tucks under the brim.
Repeat the same procedures for each of your design elements: layer the scrap fabric on the front of the backing, flip it over and stitch around the design lines on the tearaway with a straight stitch, flip the whole fabric over and trim closely to the scrap.
Satin stitch around each design element.
I really set myself up for hard work by making my design so small, but this is what it looks like with the satin stitching. I used gray around the body, red rayon around the hat and white rayon around the hat brim.
After everything is done, you can remove the tear away.
This is what the reverse looks like before the tear away is removed.
That’s it! This is perfect for projects that will get handled a lot or washed regularly – children’s bibs or clothing,
Here are my other mousies:
I drew the eyes and nose on with Micron Pigma pen and subsequently zig-zagged whiskers on them.
Here are some pics of the rest of my stockings:
They bring back lovely memories from so many years ago.
Thank you so much for stopping by over this past year and following along. I am so grateful for your interest in my little blog and wish you and yours all the very best of the Christmas season.
May Peace, Love and Joy find you and your loved ones.
All the best – Chris
