How to Do Applique

It is all in the design

The trick to doing appliqué is the design. They work like this: A running stitch outline of the shape to be appliquéd is sewn and the machine stops with a programmed stop function. You stick the piece of appliqué material down, typically with spray adhesive. Then restart the machine. The design first does a tack down stitch to hold the material down and then the top stitching and any other decorative stitches around and on top of the appliqué material.

Pretty easy, huh? The hardest part of appliqués is getting the piece of material that is cut to the proper size and shape. There are several ways to have this done. How you will want to do this will depend on how many and how often you do appliqués.

Just a few

If you have just a few pieces to do, the simplest way to get your cutout is from the design itself. If I am doing just one or two of them, I will frame the appliqué material by itself in a frame and sew the outline stitch. When the machine stops, I take the hoop off and reset the design back to the beginning. I then simply cut around edge of the running stitch. You want to cut just outside the running stitch to make sure the material fits properly when it is applied.

If there is more than one or two, you can make a template out of card stock or a manila folder. Simply frame a piece of tearaway backing and tape the card stock down to it. Then sew the outline stitch as before. The needle penetrations in the card stock make it easy to cut the shape out. Then take the template and draw the shape onto the appliqué fabric and then cut the fabric out.

Woven twill fabric tends to work best for appliqué, but there are a variety of fabrics you can use. I would tend to shy away from knit materials because of the stretch when trying to apply it and felts because it disintegrates when it is washed. Other than that, you can be fairly creative in you material.

More than a few

If you have several pieces, say at least a dozen or more, to appliqué, you might consider using a company that will cut the material for you. Companies such as Stahls and Dalco will create the appliqué design for you, cut the material for you from a selection of colors and fabrics and send you the cut pieces and the sew disk designed just for that appliqué. This saves you the headache of getting it digitized, cutting the material and making sure it is correct.

They also have lots of stock designs and letters to choose from that make doing names, schools and other teams a snap. This is what most places use to do the sewn on names, numbers, school mascots and fraternity logos. They have lots of choices for those type of designs.

Heavy users

If you do appliqués frequently, then you might consider a fabric cutter. There are several types of these from modified vinyl cutters to laser cutters. Rather than paying a service to cut your appliqués, you can cut your own. In many digitizing programs they have appliqué creation settings and the ability to export files (plot files) that can be used to send straight to the cutter to create the shape. The cost of these machines has been trending downward and more and more embroiderers are beginning to create there on appliqués.

The thing to keep in mind is your return on you investment. People who do appliqués tend to do a lot of them. Other embroiderers rarely do them. I went probably 5 years before I had my first appliqué request. Now, I do them fairly frequently. Although I mainly use the process to make my own patches. But that is another subject for next time.

Steven Batts, a consultant with 17 years experience in the embroidery industry, owns Righteous Threads, Greensboro, N.C., which offers digitizing, embroidery and machine maintenance services. Steven regularly leads seminars at ISS shows and is an industry speaker and consultant.