Beware - sewing novice question - applique

[Mandy21]

In a moment of madness, I agreed that Father Christmas would bring my 6yr old daughter a cushion with "lots of butterflies, flowers and cupcakes"!

Now I've bought lots of fabric and remnants and was intending to cut butterflies / cupcakes out and stitch them to the cushion cover.

I now realise its now quite as easy as I thought. The butterfly shape is quite intricate and I just can't seem to sew a hew on it and the result to still look like a butterfly. What am I doing wrong?

I seem to remember watching a programme once where there was a product that you could iron on to the back of fabric and it meant the edges didn't fray and you could them just stitch that onto the cushion cover. Can anyone help with suggesting what that might be?

I now know it would have been cheaper just to buy one, but if anyone can offer any assistance with my homemade version, I'd be VERY grateful.

Mandy

You can use double sided bondaweb (I think that's a brand name so you can get cheaper versions too). It has a paper side and a blobby side and you can draw the picture on the paper side, cut roughly round it, iron to the fabric (i.e. bubbly side touching wrong side of fabric) then cut out properly, then peel off paper side and iron to other bit of fabric. You do have to be careful not to iron the bubbly bit by mistake - glue + iron = big mess

Sorry, meant to say, you can then either sew a straight stitch round just inside the edge of the butterfly or you could blanket stitch around the edge or zig zag round it.

Thank you, that really helps!

I do quite a bit of this sort of project & I find backing the cloth with iron fusing/interfacing BEFORE cutting the shapes helps to be more accurate - as does cutting on the fold for symmetrical shapes - then fuse the front of your actual cushion so that is more stable for sewing onto - use a bit of fabric glue to place your shapes & then zig-zag stitch in a "short" stitch legth around the edge of the shapes - if you do this in a contrat colour it can become a design feature

If your not a confident sewer, I would maybe recommend saving the scraps you have for a dolls clothes project or similar & going & getting yourself a bit of Fleece & scraps of fleece & felt in colours you like - this doesn't fray, so does away with the need for any neat hemming, in fact you can even just cut the edges with shearing scissors or even kids decorative edging scissors & then after following the steps above, just do a running stitch in a contrast wool, a little way in around the edge - sew on a few sequins, beads & buttons for added detail & there you go :)

I've a fleece Character Cushion on my profile pictures to give you an idea of what I mean, but it doesn't need to be as complicated as that one

hope that helps

thank you, loving the cushion in you profile pics