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Hi there. I’m Nicole Gilbert and you’ve joined the stop scrolling start sewing podcast. Are you new to sewing and want to start quilting but have no idea where to begin? Each Wednesday? Join me as I share the ins and outs of that quote, what? If you don’t have a sewing machine, have no idea how much fabric you need, or you’re just trying to figure out where the heck to stick that bobbin This is the podcast for you.

Hey, folks, Nicole here and I am back. Welcome to Episode 57 of the start scrolling stops, stop scrolling start sowing podcast. And I am back from what at least I consider to be a much deserved summer break. And boy do I have a lot in store for you this year. This is an episode that you definitely don’t want to miss. And be sure to listen in for all the cool new things coming up. But first, a quick announcement. enrollment for learn to quilt in 60 days is open now, and only for a limited time. Doors will close on Sunday, September 12. And the first day of class is the 13th. To learn all of the details head on over to Nicole Gilbert quilts.com slash enroll. Okay, guys, time for today’s episode. For those of you who are faithful listeners, you know that applique isn’t really mme. I think I’ve even said those exact words several times on the podcast. But recently that’s changed for me. If you listen to my New Year’s episode a few months back, I mentioned that this year, I wanted to learn some new techniques. And I have truly dived face first in on this. So I have become a prolific bag maker, predominantly with by Annie’s bag patterns. And we’ll be talking about that a little bit more this fall.

I have

truly become an English paper piecing addict. I’m working on a Tula Nova quilts because obviously Tula pink, I’m obsessed and what other better way to learn. I am doing one that highlights her monkey wrench collection, which is one of the older ones and I have been kind of saving it not knowing what to do with it. And so I started a to lenova I’m obsessed Holy cow. And last but not least, I have become an applique artist. Oh, I know where is the crow pie I need to eat so much crow. Um, but you know it it is what it is. I have to admit, whenever I used to think of applique images of sunbonnet, Sue, and little houses with chimneys always came to mind. And for those of you who are familiar with my personal quilting aesthetic, you know that that is for sure. Not up my alley. If you’re not familiar with sunbonnet Sue, or at least the name of it, she is a very classic sewing pattern or applique pattern where it’s like a little girl but you can’t see her face because she has this huge tilted sunbonnet on and then she’s wearing like a Little House on the Prairie style dress. She’s basically the antithesis of everything that I like to do in quilting. There’s a time and a place for her. Please don’t come for me with pitchforks because I just, you know, maligned sunbonnet Sue, if you’re if she’s your jam, go for it, just not typically my style. But anyway, I really wanted to at least try it. I feel like especially as I’ve gotten more and more students now, all over the world. And I am traveling to teach at guilds and my listeners are literally from every corner of the planet. I really want to have a good foundation, even if it’s not something that I love to do every moment of every day. I want to have a good foundation in many, many different quilting techniques. So I really went out there and I started looking for something to do for applique I’m like, I’m gonna find it. I’m gonna find mme and I’m gonna do it. And oh my gosh, I found it.

It is.

What I found was with Shannon Brinkley studios. She does something called scrappy applique It’s beautiful, it’s gorgeous. And I found some really cool ways to make applique my own. And I mean, I loved it so much so that I’ve even started down the path of certification to teach this specific technique for this national brand. And again, more on that later this fall, because I’m still going through the certification process.

But I’m really,

really, really excited about it. And I was just like, holy cow, I’m an applique. person. So now I figured what better way to start a new season off of the podcast than by me eating a bagel crow pie. And going through some of the basics with you guys.

of like,

what is applique? What do you even use for applique. Obviously, this is not going to be a deep dive tutorial, you would need to be able to see me for that. And podcasts don’t really give us that ability, not to mention the fact that when I do teach Apple hate, I want to do this very specific technique, which is scrappy applique, which I won’t be able to do until later this year or early 2022. And so we’re not even going to go there. But I do want to kind of talk about applicant with you, especially because I know some of you are students of mine who have learned to quilt who are exploring newer, more advanced techniques, and I just want you to kind of think about maybe adding another feather to your cap, just throwing it out there. Okay, so what is applique applique is the process of taking a image a design, some sort of outline of some sort, and attaching it or, or fixing it to the front of a quilt, a T shirt, a pair of pants, whatever you it, it’s done in garment sewing, as well as in quilting.

So

think about if you were to get a, you know, take a piece of fabric and cut out a perfect heart shape. Now, this might not be the easiest thing to include in a quilt. Because not only would you be, you know patchwork piecing curves, but you’d also be doing the math to figure out how to get that heart to set into the pieces around it smoothly. So instead of doing that, what you would do is you would normally patchwork piece or even use a single whole cloth. And then you would take that heart and attach it right on top.

I know right?

So

some there are so many schools with applique you guys have heard all of my previous opinions on applique. And my humble eating of the crow pie. However, there are people who are obsessed with applique and like only applique. And they use like they don’t patchwork piece. They just take big old pieces of plain flat cloth. You know, plain fabric doesn’t have to be solid, it could be pattern, whatever, but they take one piece. And then they make applique designs and embellishments and put them on it. And then that’s like their whole thing. It’s almost like for people who do that. I I liken it to almost like making your own quilt panel. I mean, right. Kind of cool. But how does it actually attach, you’re not just sewing it in with a straight line stitch, mostly because it’s not going to hold up very well. What most people do for applique or raw edge applique in particular, because that’s what I’m going to be discussing

raw edge

applique there’s needleturn applique there’s, there’s so much oh my gosh, applique is like a whole nother rabbit hole you can go down my friend. It’s It’s its own thing, I swear. But with raw edge applique you’re going to fix it to the front of your your panel or quilt or whatever you’re choosing to do with a satin stitch.

If your

sewing machine doesn’t have a satin stitch, then you would use a zigzag stitch. And there’s so much more to it than just that. Like you’re not just going to cut out your little heart. SIG zag stitch it on and call it a day because you’re going to have problems I promise you that you’re going to To use fusible web, you’re going to use tearaway stabilizer.

There’s there’s a whole thing, but I’m actually going to so now we’ve discussed what applique is, let’s talk about all the materials that you would use. And that’s really where we’re going to stop for today. That’s like our whole conversation. And you’re, I’ll be filling in a lot of gaps when I go through what you’ll be using. So first and foremost, fabric. cool thing about this is that you can use fabric that you might not use, traditionally, for patchwork piecing, because you don’t want to cut it up, or, you know, fussing cutting would be fussy cutting it all would be wasteful, and yada, yada, yada. However, you can use all those pieces for your applique. Think about dear old sunbonnet Sue, how pretty would her little Amish dress be in one of those Liberty fabrics, you know, pretty cute. Just saying it is nice and micro pie. But think about it, you can use all those random fabrics that you might not know how to incorporate into traditional patchwork piecing. Also, you can use your scraps, leftover pieces from previous projects, these are great, because you’re not thinking about oh my gosh, I’m trying to make sure I’ve got enough to make it through 1612 inch blocks. No, instead, you’re just like, I’m trying to make three stars, I’ve got enough to cut out three stars, you know what I mean? So there you go. So that’s huge with the fabric. Next up is your fusible web. And there’s so many different types of fusible web out there. The biggest thing is that this is why you’re going to use for fusible web first, you are going to attach it to the back of your fabric that has been cut into your desired shape. And then you’re going to use that to then attach it to the quote panel. So it’s going to be like its own version of basting. So you’ll want something that is going to be sticky on both sides. So it sticks to the fabric and then sticks to the item that you are fixing the applique piece onto you’ll want something super lightweight. So using and true interfacing is going to be almost too heavy, because you want it to feel like the applicate piece was directly part of the patchwork piecing you don’t want it to feel stiff and in addition to you want it to kind of be as seamless as possible. And fusible web will do that better than a interfacing well. Now there’s a lot of different brands out there. For those of you who are going to big box retailers to purchase these things. Wonder under is made by peloton which is probably the most prolific brand I mean, no matter where you go, you probably can find some version of pelan p e l l o n wonder under is the fusible web. It’s great. There are people out there who love misty fuse is another brand silky makes a fusible web as well. So there’s a lot of different brands out there for you. But you’ll want it to be a fusible web and not interfacing. Next up parchment paper or a Teflon sheet. Now I’ve used both, I kinda like parchment paper more than a Teflon sheet. Here’s what you’re going to use it for. When you are first affixing your fusible web to your piece, it’s going to be bigger than your fabric is. And so you’ll want to have this Teflon piece underneath the fabric so that the when it gets heated up, the fusible web doesn’t stick to whatever’s around your fabric, you know your ironing board, the towel whatever your your so choose to use as your backing underneath your product when you’re ironing. You’ll also want another piece on top of it so that your iron doesn’t immediately get glued to the fusible web. And so I like parchment paper because it’s typically thinner than Teflon sheets. flipside, Teflon sheets are reusable you just wipe and go not that parchment paper is not because I I’d have reused by parchment paper, but there will become a crinkle life to it kind

of thing and

then you’ll just kind of rubbish it and then go to the go to another piece from the roll. But it is relatively inexpensive and easily purchased at your grocery store. So you could do both. Also, if you are somebody who uses a Cricut and you use heat transfer vinyl, chances are a lot of You’re ones that you purchase off of like Amazon, not necessarily the rolls, like the actual cricket brand rolls. But the big squares that you purchase off of like Amazon usually come with one of those Teflon sheets. So you might have them laying around and you might not even know it. Okay, fabric shares this is pretty straightforward. Once you’re, you’ll need to cut out your item from your image from the fabric, so you’ll need fabric tree for that. Also, you will need to cut off some of the fusible web fusible web is pretty thin. So I will say that you can kind of tear away the pieces that aren’t being used. However, if you want to reuse parts, it’s always going to be better to cut it off instead of tearing it off so that the pieces are still usable. tear away stabilizer. Now what do we need stabilizer for folks? Sometimes you might not need it. I’m throwing that little caveat out there. But you’ll use your tearaway stabilizer behind your fabric. So that that way when you’re doing your satin stitch or your zigzag stitch, you don’t create tunneling. And what tunneling is is like this like puckering that happens is gathering that happens of the background fabric from such a heavy dense stitch. And you’ll have may have noticed that if you’ve ever had clothing that had something kind of affixed to the front, it’s like this little paper stuff that you can pull away. That’s tearaway stabilizer. So you want to have that behind your fabric, your applique piece so that that way you can and when I say behind, I mean, if you were looking at it, you would have tearaway stabilizer, then the background piece of fabric, then the applique piece on top, that would be your sandwich. So the it’s the stabilizer is behind the background fabric, you would then satin stitch it on, and then tear it away. And this just keeps you from getting any tunneling or puckering around the edges of your applique piece. If the fabric you are sewing it on to is something like a duck cloth, or a canvas or something super heavy duty like a leather or or something like that, you may get away without using the stabilizer because it’s it’s heavy enough that it may not cause puckering. And then lastly thread. For this I there’s I mean you can use any thread you would like. I suggest when you’re new, the thread color you choose is very similar to your background. So that that way it kind of like fades away because there is when especially the more intricate the design of what you’re going around is you can definitely see breaks in the satin stitch pretty easily. And so you want it to blend in at first until you get pretty good at it. Visually speaking, this is a great time to use some of that silky thread because I love a good shiny pretty satin stitch. I just think it looks great. But that again is personal preference. You might like that nice matte look that 100% cotton thread gives you go for it. Be my guest whatever you so choose because like I always say, if you’re not having fun and you’re not feeling all designing and artsy about it, what are we doing here? Okay, guys, so that was just the basics. And I mean the bare bones basics with applique. I just felt like, honestly, if I’m telling the truth, I was sitting here, drafting out my list of topics for the fall. And I’ve literally had just put down an applique piece and I was like if I don’t talk about applique I am gonna feel like the biggest poser. So here it is my applique episode. But there’s a lot of really cool things coming down the pipeline. And I’m really really excited about it. In the coming months, I will be getting certified to teach this scrappy applique technique. So keep an eye out for your chance to take part in one of my live online classes. If you are the program director of a quilt Guild, you’ll be able to book me to come visit you in person and teacher quote killed. The same goes for Bayani bags. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen quite a few of my by any bags by now and I am beginning to teach at a local quilt shop here and I am available for live instruction in the coming months. So again, that’s another thing that you can keep your eyes out for. And of course, there is another cohort open for logical in 60 days. So I’ve got a lot of stuff going on guys, and I’m so excited to be back with you all. Alright guys, I will see you again next week. You have just finished another episode of the stop scrolling start sewing podcast. Thanks for hanging out with me and make

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