Learning to Make Reverse Appliqué Using Decorative Stitches

Step 1

There are many ways to decorate clothing and accessories. Personally, I really like factory-made appliqués, especially on denim fabrics. I was curious to recreate this kind of embellishment, and after several unsuccessful attempts, I got a great result that was just as good as factory-made. I want to share this method of reverse appliqué on fabric with you as well.

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Step 3

To understand how this technique works, I recommend making a test appliqué on a separate scrap of fabric (rather than jumping right to a pair of pants like I did, which ended up having to be redone several times before they could be worn again).
Place an embroidery hoop on the piece of fabric. On the scrap, draw a design with two outlines, which will be the appliqué. In this tutorial, it is a teardrop paisley. Place a small cut of appliqué fabric under the fabric being decorated (this can be absolutely any fabric you like in terms of texture and pattern).
Stitch along the inner outline and cut away the top layer of fabric, 2-3 mm from the stitching line toward the inside of the "teardrop." On the back side, trim the fabric 2-3 mm from the stitching line in the other direction as well.

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Step 6

Install a satin stitch foot on your machine and finish the raw edge of the appliqué with a dense zigzag or an appliqué stitch. After that, choose another decorative stitch and sew it as close as possible to the finished edge. If the appliqué area is large, you can stitch several rows of different decorative stitches.

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Step 10

Once the appliqué design is finished, remove the embroidery hoop and press the appliqué thoroughly from the wrong side. Did it turn out well? Now we can boldly decorate clothes or bags and give new life to old things!

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