Thursday, April 22, 2010

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,

7 comments:

Jackamo said...

Sounds so fun! Everyone did a great job. Miss you!!!

Jackamo said...

Question - I saw that you use felt for the appliques sometimes. How does it hold up in general? After machine washing?

Also, is the bonding agent strong enough for heavy fabrics like corduroy?

Le said...

look like you all had fun and did a great job!

Amy said...

You've been nominated for a blog award on my blog. Don't feel obligated to participate. I just wanted you to know that I found all of the boy oriented crafts you do inspirational!!!

Jenny said...

Jackamo, about your question on felt. I've used the synthetic kind of felt (see the Valentine's Day pattern) and it washes up okay. Sometimes you get balls of felt you have to pick off, but so far it's doing okay. It may not last as long as the fabric, but I'll let you know.

Amy, I hope you read this because I want to say, THANK YOU for the award. I checked out your site and didn't see an email address and for some reason, that type of commenting doesn't let me comment (I'm going to have to figure that one out).

Jen

Unknown said...

After you told me about this, we appliqued onesies of all sizes at a baby shower, and gave them to her as a present. It was so much fun. The mom moved right before the baby was born, and she's posted pictures of her daughter in many of the year's worth of onesies. It makes it feel like they are a little closer. Thanks for the idea!

143 Records said...

Hi greeat reading your blog