Butterfly Applique

My daughter made two different butterfly applique t-shirts. One by hand and one using the sewing machine.

Applique is a fairly simple technique and can make a fun sewing project for children. Applique means sewing a pre-cut fabric shape such as a heart or a star, onto a background. My daughter sewed butterflies onto a t-shirt background.

 The key to applique is the iron-on paper that is placed between the fabrics to hold the design in place.

 First the paper is ironed onto the fabric to be cut out. Since the back side is paper, any design can be sketched onto the paper for cutting. Stencils tend to work really good as they are usually simple, yet recognizable shapes.

We used Pellon Wonder Under Fusible Transfer Web to create the design.

Her first butterfly project was sewn by hand. She stitched buttons and ribbon to a butterfly shape.

Then she stitched around the outside to hold the butterflies in place.

Her second project was done on the machine. The beginning steps were the same, but the machine was used to sew around the outside of the butterfly. Any basic machine can be used as long as it is set to a wide stitch with a short length. After the butterfly was in place, buttons were hand stitched for embellishment.




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