How to Applique with Fusible Adhesive - One Block from Start to Finish

hi I'm Wendy from shiny happy world and today I'm going to show you from start to finish how to applique a block using printable fusible adhesive so this is the pattern for a single block it's hazel I've labeled all of the pieces that you're going to be cutting out so that if you get them mixed up with another bird block you can keep your beak separate and your bellies separate a lot of the pieces are very similar in shape so this is from one of my patterns and what I've done is already prep it for use with a usable adhesive that means that the patterns have already been reversed because you always need to use the reversed image when you're using the fusible adhesive because the glue is on the back side and they've also been exploded so that the belly is moved out of here because what you're going to want is a little extra fabric here to tuck under the belly piece so I've already exploded it so that we have a little bit of space between all of our pieces if you're using another pattern that hasn't had this happen you're just going to need to trace onto the paper side of your adhesive of your fusible adhesive you're going to need to trace the reversed image of the pattern so you want to trace the mirror image of what you want the final image to look like this one it's already been done so the first thing you're going to do is what I call rough cut around all the pieces that means you want to cut a little bit of space showing so you're not cutting right on the line you're just cutting a little bit past the line it does not have to be much at all especially past the solid lines and leave a little extra space past the dotted lines and you'll see why in just a minute we're just going to rough cut all of these pieces out this is a big enough scrap that I'm going to save it because I can use that for a smaller piece later cut around the jelly cut around the tail again I'm going to leave just a little bit of extra room here where I've got a dotted line then I'm going to cut the two eyes as one piece and the piece so now I've got all of my pieces rough cut the next step is to fuse those down to the backside of the fabric so let's start with the eyeballs before I lose them they're going to go on just a plain black fabric I've been using black for all of the eyes of all of the birds in this quilt so they'll all kind of go your fusible adhesive is going to be paper on one side and it's going to be bumpy on the other side that's the adhesive and it's going to melt when we iron it the temperature that you need to iron to that is different for every manufacturer some of them want steam some of them want no steam some of them want a very hot iron some of them want a slightly cooler iron you just need to read the instructions on the package of whatever you have and then I rough cut around that piece we'll cut it out more precisely in just a minute first I like to get everything fused down so we've got eyeballs I'm going to take care of that beak before I lose that small little piece again you're going to put it adhesive the bumpy adhesive side down to the backside of your fabric see the front side and the back side because what we're doing here is applying the glue and that's going to stick right to the top there I'm going to use this kind of neutral cream color with some little dots on it this is going to be my Birds Billy so just give it a little bit of a press first if it's got any wrinkles in it stick that down give it a little rough cut around it the pieces are just a little easier to manage once they don't have a lot of fabric on them my tale is going to be this dark blue fabric with some polka dots on it this fabric doesn't really have any direction to it it works in any direction so I'm just going to put it on there in the way to use the fabric most efficiently the next one you'll see we're going to worry a little bit about the direction there's the tail piece and now I just need the body and the body is going to go on this beautiful chevron print and since it does have a definite direction I don't want to put it down so that the zigzags will be going crossways on it I really want them to be going straight across the body so I am going to actually think about the placement and try and get that on there neatly use this piece in place and then rough cut around it all right now we have all of our pieces rough cut and now they're smaller and they're going to be easier for us to manage to do our more careful cutting so let's start with the belly but that's a simple one this is all a solid outline so I'm going to cut it right on that line all the way around and when you've got a solid line and you're doing a smooth cut try and make it as smooth as you can you don't want any jagged edges here because this edge is going to be visible so the belly is cut now the tail has both a solid outline and a dotted line the dotted line on all of my patterns indicates where this piece is going to tuck behind another piece so I never cut actually on the dotted line I cut just a little bit past it so I'll have a little bit to tuck underneath and you'll see when we put the whole thing together what that does then I'm going to go and cut on the solid line I'm going to cut right on that line forth close enough depending on the pattern you may or may not need to be super precise with your cutting mine are big easy shapes that are pretty forgiving so now the tail piece is cut out and I've got that little bit extending past the dotted line so the beak is all solid line I'm going to cut that out now I have a beak and all of these pieces are labeled which is going to help you if you are doing your blocks kind of assembly line you won't get your eyeballs and your tails and your bellies and things mixed up so these eyes are small so them someplace where you'll be able to find them again later but they're just simple oval so they're not a tricky shape to cut out and then the last thing is the body and this is another one where we have some solid lines and some dotted lines so this time we're going to cut the solid line first by doing a rough cut initially around the pattern pieces before we fuse them down that allows us to have adhesive going right up to the cut edge of the fabric sometimes I'll see people that want to cut the pattern pieces out before they fuse them down they want to cut them right on the line and stick them down and then try and cut the fabric out to match the edge of the pattern piece and that's really hard to do accurately even if you get a really close cut you're still usually going to have a few threads at the edge maybe showing that don't have the adhesive and that's just a few threads that can come loose on your finished block so now I'm going to do this dotted line and just like on the tail piece I'm going to give myself a little bit here it can go tuck underneath the belly piece when we stick that down now we have the body piece cut out we're almost ready to assemble the final block but I need to show you one more thing and this is important if you're tracing the pattern you want to make sure to trace any facial features onto your pattern piece even if you're not going to cut these out and here's why you need to transfer that image and it's easiest if it's on this adhesive this is stuck really well it's going to stabilize the fabric I'm going to put it in a window so you can see once the light is shining through it it's very easy to see those marks and I'm just going to draw a little circle inside each of these shapes I'm not drawing it right on the line because then I have to get my pieces exactly on there this way I have a little we'll go room but I know where the eyes are supposed to go and where the beak is supposed to go you want to make sure to do that step before you peel the back off now it's time to stick it all down so I've got my block now this is I'm using the quilted Yugo technique on this quilt and I'm doing it backwards so I've actually already quilted my block you can see some straight line quilting in there by doing that before I do the applique it means I didn't have to go around the applique to do it and I could just do straight lines zip zip and that was really fun and easy so now I'm going to applique on top of this quilt block you see the back you can see the quilting really clearly so start peeling pieces off you're just going to peel that paper backing off and you can see that the back of the fabric is all shiny and smooth now the adhesive is fused to the back of the fabric and when we fuse it down later to the block when we're all done laying it out that's going to melt that glue is going to melt again and this time it'll stick that fabric to the to the block so now the tale if you remember has that little dotted line there so that tale curve is going to tuck under the body when I tucked shifted my bird the wrong direction so this is the time that you can really play around with all your pieces too you could make the tail come up higher if you wanted in my original design I've got it down pretty low on the body and that's it seems pretty well centered I don't usually try and get things exactly centered and I like things to be a little bit off kilter sometimes so now we're going to put the belly on there peel the back off we're going to just stick that down now when I cut out when I left a little bit around that dotted line I left a little bit of overhang that was going to show past the belly there so I just snipped those corners off now my belly is going to line up there adjust that tails just a little bit once you stick this down it's pretty much stuck I've seen people do stuff where they reheat it and move things around while it's still warm but that is that's hard to do so before I put the face on or anything I'm just going to do a quick stick to get these things in place and I am being really careful not to move the iron around I'm just lifting it up and pressing it in place and I'm not counting seconds or anything on this right now I'm just getting a just getting a quick stick I'll come back and do it properly in a second when I have got the features on I just didn't want to had those where I liked them and I didn't want to bump them so now we're going to stick the beak on and I've got my handy dandy outline there and since I did it smaller than the beak I just need to make the beak cover that outline and we're good same thing with the eyes put one eye just peel in the backing off and put the other eye make sure that all looks good now I'm going to do the fusion down for real so usually most of the manufacturers again it's different for everyone but most of them you are sticking it down pretty quickly to get the initial fuse and then the second fuse when you're bonding fabric to fabric is a little bit longer so make sure you're reading all the directions and don't just assume that the first directions are for all of the sticking because usually it's a quicker hit and also a lower temperature for that initial just defuse the paper to the fabric you do want to make sure to move your iron a little bit because most irons have little divots on the bottom and this one has a pretty big one where the foot comes out it's got nice small ones everywhere else and a big flat plate there with no divots at all but you want to make sure that you're getting a nice even fuse so you want to move it so that your your bumps move around and that is done I like to let it cool flat before I do anything else with it and then all I'm going to do is go back around it I'm going to just straight normal stitching nothing fancy no fancy stitch just a straight stitch all in black thread and I'm going to stitch all the way around this block and then I'll show there I'll have a link to a blog post that goes with this video and that'll show a video I mean a still shot of the finished block so that you can zoom in and see it real close so that's it now that I've discovered some products I really like for fusible adhesive adhesives that aren't too stiff and that that work really well I really really love this method for applique quilts you can see that it's really fast really easy and it allows you to play around with the pieces some because it's easy to move them around like moving that tail up and down or you can tip the body a little bit on the block and it's just really easy and fun to play with I'm Wendy from shiny happy world I'll see you next time

Channel: Wendi Gratz

Views: 374,412

Rating: 4.8963499 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, appliq, applique, tutorial, bird, fusible adhesive

Id: 9CjL2bamUR0

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 08 2014