Learn turned-edge quilt appliqué - the easy way! Beginners welcome.

hi linda with thistledown and company again and today i'm going to show you how to use whisper light tracer foundation to make awesome easy turned edge appliques not fusible appliques turned edge appliques where you have no raw edges and they come out absolutely beautifully and anyone can do it you're going to love it so we'll get started first you're going to need a pattern of an applique you want to make today we're going to make a whale we'll have a whale of a time no sorry i couldn't help it to protect your drawing you'll see why if it's like in a book or you're borrowing it from someone and you don't want to marr it up take a page protector and lay it over the drawing then you're going to take a piece of whisper light tracer foundation it's my product it comes in 42 inch widths so it's sold by the yard so yard is 42 by 36 and it's a super super lightweight foundation and this is just one of the many uses you may have seen some of my other videos and today we're going to be doing turned edge applique lay your whisper light over your pattern and just put a couple pins in place if you have a page protector you're going to pin right through that too you don't have to pin a lot but you don't want it squirreling around while you're trying to trace it page protector makes it kind of slippery i'll put some pins in okay then you're going to take a marker now today we're going to be using a turquoise fabric so i'm not going to use the washout marker today today i'm going to use the black friction marker to draw my drawing and it removes with heat and it's a nice fine line it's really a nice marker so you're going to take this and you're going to trace the applique shape right on the line it does easy peasy just keep tracing oops if you go off it doesn't matter a little bit just trace where it's supposed to go easy to do [Music] okay i'm just gonna do a little more of this and i've got one already done the magic of video so you can see there's a traced applique okay and you can see because i used a page protector i didn't mark my pattern if i hadn't used a page protector that would happen so that's why i say if you want to protect your drawing use one if it's your drawing and you're not borrowing it from someone doesn't matter don't use the page protector so that's the tracing part so ta-da there's one all traced and another nice thing about this technique is if you want to place your applique in a particular spot according to your fabric pattern underneath in other words fussy placement so for this whale it'd be kind of nice to maybe have that be his eye okay so you can see i've got the eye where i want it to be and you can kind of see where your applique is okay so you're going to lay it on the right side of your fabric now if you go oh do i have this on the right side yes the right side so when you question yourself yes it's on the right side so you're going to place it where you want it if you're happy with the placement then you're going to pin it and you're just going to pin you don't have to pin crazy you are going to be so thrilled with this technique everyone kind of you say needle turned or edge turned applique and sometimes it sends a shiver down their spine if you've never done it seems like such a mysterious technique and i've done needle turn applique for many years and now that i've done this technique i absolutely love it and this is what i use all the time okay so we've got it pinned to our desired fabric on the right side now we're going to stitch directly on the line so you don't have to worry about guessing or anything else you're going to stitch right on the line and you're going to use a matching thread so in this case we're going to be using a turquoise thread for the turquoise fabric so we're going to take it over to our machine and you can start anywhere and i'm using a shorter stitch length i'm using a stitch length of 2 instead of 2.5 and when i get to these tighter curves here i'm going to shorten my stitch length even more because stitch length let me take this back out stitch length when you're going around a tight curve the shorter the stitch length the smoother your curve is going to be if i did this curve with a 2.5 or even a 3 it would be kind of a choppy curve but because the stitch length is smaller it's going to go around that curve real nice actually i'll start over here so i can show you that so i'll start here and right now i've got it on to 2.0 stitch length so i'm stitching right on the line and i'm using matching thread move your pins as you get to them so now i'm getting to this tight curve now i'm going to reduce my stitch length to 1.5 and just swing it around the curve if you need to adjust your fabric while you're going around a curve if your machine has the option of needle down choose that option if it doesn't manually put your needle down before you ever raise your presser foot otherwise you're going to throw off where you're going and you might get a little wobble in your stitching so always stop with your needle down when you're doing this sometimes it's nice just stop and let your fabric relax pivot slightly don't make any giant pivots because again then you're going to get kind of choppy curves so just keep stitching around that tight curve now i can go back to a 2.0 stitch length and so we're going to stitch all the way around on the line so it's hard to see because i have matching thread but i'm not gonna let you sit and have to watch me stitch the whole way around so i've got one all set to go i will show you okay so ta-da and this one i used white thread so you can see it a little better the matching thread you really can't hardly see where i stitched so this one we've stitched all the way around on the line didn't leave any openings the stitches connect all the way around this is where it overlapped where it came to the end okay so it's on the right side of your fabric and we've stitched all the way around now we're going to take a nice sharp little scissors and we are going to cut it out you're going to cut it and leave a scant quarter inch seam allowance outside your stitching line just keep cutting away and what's nice about turned edge appliques versus fusible appliques now fusible applique don't get me wrong it has its place and it's quick it's easy but with fusible applique unless it's something you're never ever going to um you have raw edges and they fray so you have to finish the raw edges with a satin stitch and a satin stitch can be very tedious and if you don't do it well it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb and also fusible appliques aren't as soft they're not flexible and they don't have dimension they're very flat on your quilt the turned edge appliques or needle turn as they're known also are a softer more dimensional applique keep cutting around and i'll show you what we do when we get to those any points so if you've never tried applique before this is the perfect way to start and once you start this way you're not going to want to switch because it is really really fun and anyone can do it it's also great if because needle turn applique is very intense on your hands if you have limited mobility or bad arthritis this is much easier on your hands instead of trying to take a needle and turn it under okay so we've trimmed away our applique okay now we have to snip these inner curves and the inner points so that when we turn it it turns smooth so you just take your scissors and you nip every little bit around the curve and want to make sure of course you don't cut into your stitching and just keep cutting and cut and cut and cut and cut all around the curve one more over here two more okay and then here where you have it like any you're gonna clip into that point and same thing over here by his mouth you're gonna clip in don't cut the stitching and here because this is a very little area i'm going to make the seam allowance even a little smaller to reduce the bulk but that's another nice thing about whisper light there's like virtually no bulk it's so nice and lightweight and same thing here you can cut off the little points where you have points okay now the magic begins you're just going to take your scissors and you're just going to slice the whisper light slice is super easy not the fabric just the whisper light okay now you're going to turn it right side too and started here now the tail because we're going through a narrow area here takes a little bit more doing but not a big deal bring it through and then you can take your purple thing i love this tool and most of these notions and tools i do have on my website my website is thistledownquilts.com and of course you can find the whisper light there too here we go get that tail through there and when you're using the purple thing there we go you have to make sure you're poking the fabric and not the whisper light because see it'll go right through the whisper light so you want to make sure that when you're poking the fabric you're actually poking the fabric that's going to help you get that tail through oops long guy poking through the whisper light here we go and it's coming now see i didn't want to choose just a super easy plain old shape for you to show you that even for more complex shapes it works wonderful there we get to the wider part now go in there there we go almost through the tunnel though i'll go back in here we go almost got a tail yep start looking like a whale anytime though ta-da here we go and you can see we got nice little points where we want to have points nice little innie where we want to have any the rest of this is super easy to turn here's his little mouse okay there so now like i said you can take your purple thing and run it along the seam allowance in between the fabric and the fabric i said not between the whisper light it goes right through running along there and that's why we clip those curves so we get a nice smooth curve here and you can see we have a nice smooth curve because we also did those little stitches so you just want to tame all this out make sure it's all turned up there we go missed that little there okay so now we don't want to press on that now you can start pressing and i'm going to put a little snip here to get my purple thing in i don't want to go there so i can push these out make sure all your okay so now we can start pressing and i'll do it from this side and you can press whisper light now you don't want to have your iron set to super super hot the medium setting is fine and this way because it's not a fusible whisper light has no glue on it you don't have to worry about mucking up your iron or your ironing surface see how this is turning out turning out wonderful okay you just keep moving on and pressing and you can see all the edges are turned under nice and neat and tidy no raw edges to worry about i don't know if you've ever tried needle turn applique a lot of people find it very frustrating and this takes that frustration out but with a very much the same result kind of get a little lip out there a little more there we go and also this is about pressing down very nice if you have an area that's giving you trouble if you spritz it a little bit of water cotton is flexible it's a natural fiber so when it's wet you can kind of tame it into submission so if you have any problem areas just give it a spritz and then it will behave so here i want to roll that seam under and when you use matching thread you're not going to see those threads but on this sample i used white so you could see it but look at that lovely applique all the edges turned under neat and tidy and this was somewhat of a complex shape you know it wasn't just a heart or something like that and you do this for so many things okay so now that we have our applique all pressed and tidy you're going to put it on a background of course and this is the same wheel on a background now also before we continue i want to show you that let's see you can now when you trace your drawing it's going to i trace the drawing and you can see the whale is facing the same way i traced it sometimes you want to reverse your applique and have it facing the other way well it's super easy to do so here's the same thing traced it facing this way if i want the whale facing the other way all you have to do is flip it over so that's a super easy way to reverse your applique design trace it and then just flip it because you can see it from see it from both sides so to reverse your design trace it and just flip it and then i would put it on the fabric do the same thing i did with this put on the fabric sew all the way around cut it out turn it right side too and then we would have a whale facing the other way so that's the easy way to reverse a design so anyway we have our little whale applique we put him on a background and i'm going to be showing you this in more detail but before i do you have multiple ways of attaching it to your background some people like hand work some people like machine work and so here's where it's not attached from here all the way to this thread hanging out i did hand applique so that's the same technique you would use for needle turn but you don't have to sit there and turn the edge under by hand as you go all the edges are already turned under and you just stitch away so that's this section this section all i did was edge stitch with a straight stitch and a matching thread by machine so people that like machine work there's your machine work maybe you want more of a contrast this black here is blanket stitch by machine and this was a size 40 thread the thickness and heaviness of your thread makes a difference too and you can see this is high contrast of course after that i did blanket stitch by machine with matching thread in a 60 weight thread you can see it pretty much disappears and then for people that also like handwork this is hand blanket stitching with two strands of embroidery floss in black and of course you can do it in any color you want so you have hand blanket stitch machine legged stitch matching thread machine blanket stitch contrasting thread machine straight stitch matching thread and hand applique stitch and that's where it's not stitched out so we'll go over to the machine and i'll show you how to do a couple of these okay i told you i'd show you how we're going to attach the whale to the block now i'm basting by hand the whale to the background i prefer basting rather than pins because the basting stitches are super easy to remove and don't get in the way like pins do sometimes so a lot of times i just like to hand baste my appliques to the background but you can pin if you want it's your choice end of the thread there we go so you're just going to baste it down there's the other tail just a running stitch and that's going to keep it in place as you work okay so it's basted down and now i'm going to show you the blanket stitch with the 60 weight thread by machine and what you're going to do is you're going to bring your needle down of course first set your machine to a blanket stitch and this one i have it set at the width of two and the stitch length at two so two and two you're going to get this size stitch you can play around on your machine if you have a blanket stitch on your machine and see what you like because you might want the stitch to go deeper in or further apart and that would be adjusting your stitch width and your stitch length so you're just going to stitch right along next to the applique and the blanket stitch jumps over you want to go on the slow side so you have some control so as you can see because i hand-basted this there's no pins getting in the way so that's what i i do recommend doing that now you might this thread really disappears because it's a good match you might be tempted to use invisible thread on something like this but never ever use invisible thread on a child or baby quilt the invisible thread is so fine and invisible if it's unravels and a piece of it can get wrapped around their little finger or their little toe and you can't see it and or they could you know get it in their mouth and you can't see it so never use invisible threads for babies or children's projects so just find a good matching thread and i'll just do a little bit more here okay i'll take that out you can see how it looks so this is machine blanket stitch stitch width 2 stitch length 2 with a size 60 thread and it really secures it nicely it's not very noticeable so now we're just going to go to a straight stitch and i'll do a little bit of that and show you and then i'm going to show you sorry and then i'm going to show you the hand applique stitch because if you've never done applique before and you do want to do hand applique it's good to know so this is just a straight stitch and i'm going to go to a stitch length of two and i'm just going to stitch real close to the edge this is probably the fastest way to put your applique down personally i like the hand applique or the blanket stitch but it's your quilt and you can do whatever you like okay spend a lot of time on that but there you can see the straight stitch right along the edge so they both secure very well with a matching thread they really disappear like i said you can use a contrasting thread if you want you know more design element in your stitching and now i'm going to show you the hand applique we're gonna head over here okay here we are now if you've never done a hand applique before it's a wonderful thing to learn and it's really not that difficult especially when you do this easy turned edge applique with the whisper light because you don't have to worry about turning the edge under as you stitch so the edges are all turned under my applique is based into the background i've got a matching thread i'm using an applique needle these are size 10 golden glide applique by john james so we're all set to go i have a knot in my thread and i'm going to come up behind and i'm going to bring my needle and i'm going to bring my thread out right at the crease of the fabric and that's going to bury my knot my tail so where you came up in your fabric is where you're going to go down into your fabric so you're not going to travel forward yet you're going to go down into the background right at the edge and then you're going to travel from the back and then you're going to come up and you're just going to catch a couple little threads on the edge fold of your applique and i'll do this a bunch so you can see so where your thread is now coming up that's where you're going to go down and then you're going to travel under and then you're going to come up and catch just a couple of threads and you're using a matching thread of course and this is a size 60. now with thread the higher the number the thinner the thread with needles it's just the opposite the higher the number the bigger the needle go figure anyway so you're going to go down where you came up travel a little bit under and you want to keep your stitches small catch a couple threads and continue i mean you don't want i'll show you so you don't want to like travel that far then you have big gaps in your applique so you know about a quarter eighth of an inch somewhere in there depends on the size of the piece too but with the edges turned under you can see it goes pretty quick normally i'd be holding this so i can see it better but i want you to see it so it makes a very clean looking edge you don't see the thread and it's secured down there's no raw edges so that's that's the whole thing behind hand applique it's really not a deep dark mysterious secret but i know a lot of people when they hear that they tend to shudder and think they can't do it you can definitely do it you can do it easily i'll do one more and there you are that is hand applique so it really is easy and turned edge appliques without fusible web are much softer you don't have any of the fusible behind to make it stiff and it's more dimensional it's not as flat as a fusible applique you know there's a raised up off the fabric there's some dimension to it not a lot but i mean you can see that it's just not flat flat on the fabric and as far as um whether or not i meant to mention this earlier whether or not you should trim the whisper light off the back after you turn it right side too you can and you can't it's up to you so you can either leave the whisper light in or trim it away when you're done so it's so so light it doesn't matter you're not going to feel it in there by any means so this technique uh quilt behind me this is what i did a few years back this is called peekaboo puss it's a pattern of mine and this is all appliqued and so this is easily doable with the technique i just showed you virtually any applique is and you can do this quilt in black and whites like i did or you could do some fun brights or anything but just you want to have a good contrast so that you see the kitties so give this a try i know you can do it and there's another video coming up that you're really going to love too and it's on making beautiful circles and reverse applique if you haven't seen reverse applique it's really cool and things you can do with that so we'll be doing that so take a look at my website thistledownquilts.com um there we sell the whisper light and some of the notions and we will see you next time on the next video and there'll be more thanks so much for joining me again see you later

Channel: Thistledown and Company quilts

Views: 10,180

Rating: 4.9477806 out of 5

Keywords: Turned edge appliqué, Easy appliqué, Whisperlite tracer foundation, Quilt tutorial beginners, Thistledown and Company, Appliqué for beginners

Id: vOYgE6QI7ww

Length: 35min 10sec (2110 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021