Appliqué Party: Chattanooga

Well, this winter/spring has turned into quite the crazy schedule for me. Many profuse apologies to those of you who might have checked back a few times in these past months only to see the same, sad post staring back at you.

Life happens and I chose to put family and work ahead of everything else in order to maintain some sort of sanity. Pairing priorities down to the bare bones when life's schedules get crazy really helps. However, designing and blogging was truly missed! I also have a lot of blog reading to catch up on.

Anyhoo, on to the MAIN EVENT. I am so excited to say that I recently got together with some dear friends for a girls weekend. Everyone agreed that they would like to try out appliqué so I brought my patterns, fabric scraps and Steam-A-Seam 2. The hostess provided the iron and scissors. Then we all went at it!

APPLIQUÉ PARTY 2010: CHATTANOOGA

Alas, since I had only one day in between traveling to pack for this trip, I forgot my decent camera. Also, we had this party at night. So, please excuse the picture quality, but I wanted you all to see how easy and fun it is to appliqué with this technique. NO SEWING REQUIRED.

Many of these girls are self-proclaimed non-sewers. They were wary of working with fabric as it conjured up visions of presser feet, bobbins, thing-a-ma-bobs and whatchamacallits. I promised them that this process was simple and once they understood the principles of working with the bonding agent, they would be masters.

It worked.

You can be as detailed as you like or keep the shapes simple. My recommendation is to just be creative. The designs definitely look better the more detailed you get, but you can either trace and cut out the small details provided on the patterns or use things like embroidery floss, fabric paint or buttons.

The first step is easy: cutting out the pattern pieces. Some are small, so we got out cereal bowls to put our cut pieces in to avoid them getting lost in our fabric mountain.


Here is a picture of some pattern tracing. The patterns are traced directly onto the Steam-A-Seam. We wanted to take advantage of space and materials so we tried to trace as many parts onto one sheet as possible. (Diet Dr. Pepper helped with our concentration.)


Christy, who had no former appliqué experience, really churned out the designs. I believe she won for most appliquéd patterns in one night. Here she is assembling her Vintage Truck in layers onto her onesie before using the iron to bond them all together:


Appliqué Party Results:


Every person there was super excited about the appliqué patterns and vowed to do it again. One girl even plans on hosting an appliqué party for her womens' group at church. Another still self proclaimed non-sewer is making plans for more appliquéd outfits for her boys.

Sooooo, that brings me to my next point. You really should try out appliqué. Click on the How to Appliqué button at the left or click on this link. The tutorial is truly step by step and will guide you through the entire process. Visit the shop by clicking on the button at left or on this link. There you will find many patterns to choose from!

As always,