How To Guide: DIY Easy Appliqué

How To Guide

DIY Easy Appliqué 

I had an old and very plain purple vest top from Topshop that I decided to customise using appliqué. Here's how I did it...

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1. 

First you need a template. I decided on a bird and just typed it in to Google images to find this:

I then resized it in Microsoft Word, printed it and cut it out.

2. 

Choose your material. I picked a purple and black flowery jersey. I then pinned on the template and cut out the bird.

3. 

Position your appliqué design on your item of clothing.

I pinned it on and then tried the vest top on to make sure I liked where it sat.

4.

Now to attach it. This is easy - just carefully sew around the outside. I used short straight stitches on a sewing machine to attach mine. You could also use zig-zag stitches to create more of an effect and to better secure the edges, but I quite like the way the edges curl up on this one. If you didn't have a sewing machine hand stitching would work just as well too, it'll just take a bit longer.

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And here is the finished item on:

Appliquéd top worn with: Kimono - Forever 21; Necklace - Euphoria; Boots - New Look

Next Projects

Summer Dresses!

Bit of a treat coming back from Easter weekend up North to these patterns having arrived!

I'm trying to recreate dresses I already have that I love with these patterns. I have made my own patterns before by using dresses I already have as a template, but I find these don't usually fit very well. I think I'd be able to make better patterns if I had a mannequin my size... but for now these patterns are my best option.

So the first dress I'm trying to recreate is my Tabitha Dress from Monsoon.

I love the colours and pattern of this dress, but I particularly like the fit. I think 

New Look pattern 6095 will produce a similar dress.

I'm going to make this in a powder blue; a perfect summery colour.

The second dress I'm trying to recreate is the Topshop Tapestry Dress. I bought the top in the same print but don't have the dress - unfortunately! 

I'm making New Look pattern 6262 in a Liberty print. I love Liberty fabric. There are always such pretty prints to choose from and it feels lovely too. Of course the price tag of Liberty fabric doesn't really fit with my idea of my sewing to save money though... so I'll let you into my secret. I buy second quality Liberty fabric from the Factory shop attached to the fabric factory (obviously) in Lancaster. It might not be perfect but I've never found any visible faults in the fabric and it is SO much cheaper!

This is the Liberty fabric I'll be using:

And now I'm off to sew!

New Look Pattern 6053

Skirts!

So recently I've seen so many patterned 

and bright summery skirts I want. 

This is a selection from 

Topshop and New Look...

I actually have the blue one below - I couldn't resist, I love the colours of it!

I like making clothes that are actually currently in fashion. For me it's a way of having clothes that are in but also unique and for a lower price tag!

So I found the New Look pattern 6053. This is a brilliant pattern because, as it says on the front, its really easy to use and gives such a great fit. There are only 4 pieces for each skirt - two for the front and back and two for the facing at the waist - and the only tricky part really is the zip. This was a new technique for inserting a zip for me. You overlap the fabric over the zip to hide it. It's really effective. 

I also actually followed the instructions fully this time, doing the little details like stay stitching at the beginning and understitching the facing. They are worth doing! I was going to do my own guide for understitching but I found a brilliant one online that I can't better! The link for it is here.

I used New Look Pattern 6053 to make these two skirts...

 Skirt One worn with: Top - Topshop; Boots - New Look; Necklace - Accessorize.

Skirt Two worn with: Top - Primark; Boots - George; Necklace - Accessorize

My Pink Quilt Guide

Finally finished quilt number two! Here is a stage by stage guide for this one...

Firstly use a 13cmx13cm square template to cut out 108 squares of material. I used twelve different materials and cut 9 squares of each.

My materials

I then lay out the squares for the quilt in a 9 square x 12 square rectangle. I didn't use a pattern for laying the squares out - they are completely random, so I just made sure the same ones weren't next to each other.

A stack of rows of squares

Then stitch the squares together in rows, before stitching the rows together. A great tip I found was to number each row to make sure you keep them in the right order. I originally used chalk but it rubbed off so I wrote the numbers on small pieces of paper and pinned them to each row.

Ended up with a bit too much wadding! I lay out the quilt over the backing material and wadding to cut it all to the right size. I then layered it: backing fabric wrong side up, wadding and then the quilt the right side up. I then pinned and stitched it all together. 

Then for the binding round the edge. I made my own using my new gadget! It's brilliant, I highly recommend getting one. 

I then attached the binding in the usual way all around the edge. The corners are a bit fiddly but they just need a fold on each side.

Tahdaa... The finished item!

Same Pattern, Different Dresses

My last post was of my first use of New Look Pattern 6143... this one is of my second and third!

The Suggested Fabrics for this pattern are mostly stiffer materials like cotton, linen and taffeta. I decided, however, to try it in jersey fabrics and it worked just as well:

Dress 1

Dress Two

Having watched the Great British Sewing Bee though I'm now very aware my pattern matching isn't great on dress 1! Definitely my new favourite programme.

New Look Pattern 6143

My new favourite pattern. 

I had been looking for a pattern for a dress this shape for ages before I found this bargain!

I chose to make the 3/4 sleeved dress in a pink flowery fabric. It's a bit more pink than I would usually go for but I love the material. I think the pleats work well with this material too.

The New Look 6143 pattern was simple and easy to use. The darts in the front and back of the bodice were easy to create and made it a great fit. The darts were the most fiddly part but even they weren't too tricky and they give the dress a great shape. You have to ease the sleeves and neck binding into place to fit but as long as you know that it isn't too difficult.

I'll definitely be using this pattern again.

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My step-by-step progress...

New Obsession

So I have branched away from just using my sewing machine for making clothes and have now finished my very first quilt! It took so long - even just finding all the fabrics to use took long enough! - and hasn't exactly turned out to be cheap but I am so happy with it. 

 I used the book Quilting In No Time as guidance, although I chose to use all patterned fabrics instead of half plain because I wasn't keen on how it looked on the one in the book:

Once I had FINALLY finished cutting out all my 15cm x 15cm fabric squares I arranged them in the order I wanted to sew them. I chose to make it a completely random order because I thought that would be most effective. It did take a lot of swapping to arrange it but it was totally worth it.

 I then sewed the squares into rows and then the rows together. I didn't make my seams quite as wide as recommended though which was then a bit of a problem when it came to getting the backing fabric. Because I had made the seams smaller the width of the quilt was a lot wider than the book had predicted it would be - 15cm wider in fact. This meant it was impossible to find a material wide enough to use as backing fabric. 

I was planning on using strips of material as binding anyway for the edges of my quilt, so I decided I would make the border on the back wider than that on the front, thereby adding more material to the back and solving the problem of it being too wide... Not as simple as it sounds though! The corners were so difficult and it took so many attempts to get them just right.

Next time I'm doing the seams properly and not making it so wide.

The finished item. Notice the matching cushion - definitely my favourite fabric.

Although this project was far harder work than I had thought it would be I'm definitely hooked. I've already got fabric for my next two...