4. Applique Basics: Freezer Paper

so hand applique using freezer paper is another very popular method in this case if you're familiar with these are the freezer paper you know that on the one side we've got the regular paper and it's got this plastic coating on the other side you can see kind of a shine and because of this plastic coating you can press it onto your fabric either on the right or wrong side and it will stick and then it's very easy to peel off after you've finished working so in this particular method what we do is we've cut out our shape we've drawn our shape you can draw a shape off using our heart template and cut it out of shape and iron it onto the back of our fabric and cut out the fabric with a fourth of an inch seam allowance we're going to clip only here only this part right here the rest is gonna be left as is now there are two ways to work with this with this technique though probably the most popular one that I have seen is using some fabric starch so what do you do with you just pour a little time because evaporates into thing and - a little cup and with a brush what you do is brush along the side and then using the hot iron you iron this down and you do this along the whole edge yeah and I think that they've seen several tutorials out there using this method if it works for you that's really really really great the reason why I think people like this is from what I have heard is because they feel that this is a really faster method however I have timed myself using this method and the method that I'm going to show you and I've actually found that I am faster using by basting the sites down as compared to doing this also because I think I have a really hard time not burning my fingers and I've just found that a lot harder to do this and just simply baste the edges down you can try both both ways I know that a lot of people like this way I have not seen any advantage to it timewise and for me it's just simply been easier to baste the seam allowances down as opposed to I'm using the starch method so that is what I'm going to show you here okay so I've started to baste this piece down hey and I want to show you how I work this point normally I mean a lot of people will do this but you end up with kind of a thick layer here so what I like to do is fold this point down and then bring each side down and it creates kind of a miter D and it gives me a really nice sharp point and so I will go ahead and hold that in place and then I will just continue to face the shape down okay when we come to the curves when I find as it really helps here is I kind of pull on the fabric so that it's really tight against the edge and sometimes what I'll do is I'll help myself with my needle like this I like this method because I'm kind of a perfectionist since I like for my shapes to be as perfect as possible that's what I found that by working against the edge he gives a really nice especially with curves that are kind of sometimes you get these little points on a curve and I find that using this method it really helps I haven't using though the edge of the paper also the minutes that I'm going to applique this down that edged really does help me like see here it looks like there's just a tiny little point but as I applicate down I can stick my needle in and and get that edge really nice and in shape okay so coming up to the valley here this is the only point again where we will actually clip I also like this method because I found that I can use it really well for odd shapes and I tend to do a lot of really small pieces that I find are difficult to work on with other methods and so this is the reason why I kind of I like this one okay so I see that here we have kind of a weak spot when I finish I'm going to use a little bit of fray check right in that spot to make sure that it doesn't follow that the threads don't unravel there that's just before I applique the piece okay maybe go I should have known it also that when I started basting I put my knot on the top side I don't want that one to get stuck underneath the shape because I'm gonna be able I want to pull out that basting thread when I'm finished applique in the piece and so here I'll just take a little stitch to hold this end I'm ready to applicate my heart down first I've got to decide how to hold it in place well I'm stitching so and a lot of applique methods I mean we've got these little pins applique pens which in theory we should be able to use here too but since they're so short and you're going through so many layers kind of could work but it's kind of hard to handle and if we go with bigger pins I have found that it kind of distorts shape see here it's hard to get a shape to lie flat as well as the background fabric lie flat so another possibility is to use some fabric glue but you don't want to use the glue on the paper you want to what you would want to do is simply dab if at all possible on the fabric between the stitches you don't want to glue the stitches down either hey but then I found that that is kind of hard I've got a tip here I like to share it's kind of completely unconventional I learnt this from a very very impatient student and her choice was a stapler and believe it or not it actually works pretty well I put three little staples in there hmm it's kind of low now I am going to trim this after I finish so I can choose to either remove the staples and move this up again or simply when I finish trim off the top part but I think we'll leave it there for now this works really really really well and on 100% cotton fabrics when you remove the staples leaves no holes it's the same as using a safety pin excuse me just a straight pin so there's a kind of interesting tip for you okay so I'm gonna stitch this down using an invisible stitch I'm gonna be use a yellow thread just to give you a contrast so you can see this but you should always try to match the color of your thread to the color of the fabric the applique the piece that you are that you are sewing on so in this case what I'm going to do is I like to always start kind of along the straight edge I'm going to leave a little piece open here so I'm going to start kind of right up in here now just raise the slightly and stick my needle into the edge of the piece and then I'm going to try to keep this as straight as possible so if you see the the thread I'm going to go down through the background fabric kind of at the same point that where the thread has come up in the application and then just advanced a little bit come up through the background fabric and through the edge of the applique piece keeping my thread straight the angle straight and so that I can put the needle in right next to where it came out through the application so down to the background fabric up through both fabrics and because of the paper I mean it's kind of like I'm trying not to catch the paper just coming up through the edge of the folded fabric and I find that with this method I can actually stitch the piece down a little bit faster than I can with other methods basically because the shape is being held by the paper and the basting stitches okay something else I forgot to mention was that I did apply a little bit of fray check at this point to make sure because here there's only a couple of threads really that your pitcher and vendor remember so I put a little bit of fray check there to make sure that it doesn't fray as I come around other than that this is just the basic stitch and I'm going to use that stitch to secure my applicator and sew it down and I'm going to go around the whole shape until I get to about here so I'm going to leave a little piece open here in case I finished a applicate all the way around and I have left a space open here now I've got to make a choice well the first thing is I'm going to remove those stables okay and then I can either remove my basting stitches and pull out the paper through this gap or I can go ahead and finish applique in the whole thing and then cutting out using like 1/4 of an inch allowance around cutting out the shape and pulling the paper from the back now this again is the thing of personal choice because there's different schools of thought about how much fabric you want to have behind your applique piece a lot of people do cut out the background fabric others do not and a lot of it also depends on the kind of quilting that you're gonna do in a project if you're gonna be proud quilting on top of the application shape you might want to reduce the amount of fabric in that way reduce the bulk but in this case what I'm going to do is I'm going to remove all of my basting stitches yeah now to remove the paper so what I want to do first is since this was ironed on to the back of this fabric it's still kind of stuck on so in order to loosen that paper sometimes when I just use a long pin kind of loosen this or also just use the tip of my scissors so what I'm gonna do is just open up here and stick my scissors between the paper and the fabric and loosen that okay and then carefully remove the paper through the the opening here now sometimes in here that sometimes a couple of stitches are caught on the paper but it's right along the edge so don't worry about that just very gently remove the paper you don't want to break it because the benefit of this paper is that you can actually use these templates time and time again so if you're using the same shape you do want to save the the paper template to reuse okay so though and you see the edges have not been broken you can reuse this template actually six seven times I've reused them until the paper has actually started to tear and then I can go ahead and finish closing the gap here and just finish stitching the piece down so as I said initially a lot of people don't I mean they prefer using the starch method because they feel it was goes faster I just feel that by basting the template onto the back of the fabric that it really helps me to keep the shape well I'm so go back here okay and there's my finished shape I hope you've enjoyed this you

Channel: Angie Padilla

Views: 15,001

Rating: 4.8468084 out of 5

Keywords: applique, hand applique, freezer paper applique

Id: 5Og0CHYbtbc

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2018