[How I made] Applique and Reverse Applique

Reposting an old article.

One of my favorite play with needle is applique. I personally describe it as a drawing with fabric on a fabric instead of paints.

It is a method of attaching fabrics on top of a background fabric by hand using needle turn applique method, which means using the tip of a needle to turn under the raw edges of a fabric to stitch it to the background.  When you apply running stitch(quilting) to the very next to the attached fabric at the last step, the dimensional effect is absolutely rewarding.

I much prefer applique to patchwork since it has no limit and open to any imagination enabling them to be expressed with fabrics, although it takes a lot more time to accomplish. I've seen many spectacular and awesome pieces of works done by many other creative quilters. Mind blowing...so lovely... yes I'm love with it!

For applique technique, all you need is patience and time. Let me show you a quick and brief process of applique and reverse applique. 

The process of applique. 

Draw a butterfly pattern on the white  background fabric, applique pre-cut pieces one  by one staring from the bottom. The order is important. 

You don't stitch the parts where to be covered by upper layer of fabric later. 

Note: these two pieces can be appliqued separately before paste to the main white fabric.

Lastly, to avoid bulkiness and give puffiness, cut out all the overlapped fabrics taking extra care not to cut seam allowances.

Now we only need to stitch antennas for the butterfly. 

Then, what about Reverse Applique? As you can guess from its name, we do the above in reverse order. 

Well, the reason for applying the reverse applique here is simply to express the the rabbit is behind the bus door! The butterfly is flying on the white fabric but the rabbit and her friends need to be looked like being behind the door and window. I hope it makes sense to you.

The rabbit piece goes under the door fabric.

Here's the final project. A Pencil case.