EASY Applique Tutorial

I found the tutorial I used for this project on Pinterest but you can find the tutorial on this link from Saltwater Kids! I followed her instructions exactly and she has a pattern printout for the tie which worked perfectly. I'll still go over the instructions here for you too though :)

Materials:

• tie pattern (see the link above) cut to desired size - I used the 2T size for Kye's shirt
• material for tie (or whatever you want to applique) - I bought an entire YARD of fabric b/c I was worried I'd mess up a lot and run out. Haha. I only needed maybe 1/4 a yard...I'll still probably buy 1/2 a yard next time just to be sure though!
• t-shirt - I got mine from Hobby Lobby - they have them 1/2 off ALL the time
• coordinating thread
• 1 sheet of double stick fusible web - the Saltwater Kids tutorial said she used Steam-A-Seam2 so I bought the same thing from Hobby Lobby just to make sure I did it exactly how she did
• iron
• sewing machine with zigzag stitch

To Applique:

1. Trace the pattern on the fusible web and cut it out. She suggested to cut inside the line you traced so it's slightly smaller than your fabric and will make less of a mess on the iron so I did that.

2. Position your pattern on the fabric to get the design effect you like. We wanted as many Mickey heads as we could with them in varying positions so this took us a bit to get just right (Mom is much more of a perfectionist than I am...if you can imagine that haha)

3. Pin and cut out the tie (use fabric scissors)

 4. Place the fusible web onto the back of the tie. Just peel off one side of the paper and stick it on! If it doesn't line up exactly right then just undo it and re-stick it :)

5. Once it's in the correct position, peel off the other side of the paper and line the tie up in the center of the t-shirt. Adjust as needed until it's just right. (she suggested folding the shirt in half to find the exact center but since my shirts were brand new they actually had a convenient crease in the center!)

6. Follow the instructions on the fusible web packaging and iron the tie into place. If you buy the same brand I did (the one suggested in the materials list) then it says to iron on the steam/cotton setting for 10-20 seconds.

All of the first 6 steps took less than 15-20 min to do. It was the last step that took the longest!!!

7. Sew using zigzag stitch around the tie!

It took us so long because we had to totally set up the machine...fill the bobbin...get the thread all rigged up right...etc. Plus we had to pick our settings for the zigzag stitch (how large we wanted the zigzags and how far apart we wanted them spread...this took a bit of deciding and practice stitching on scraps until we picked one). The actual sewing part took less than 10 minutes!

 finished product!!!

Today I decided to make Kye another shirt using the left over material (I have enough to make the kid like 10 Mickey shirts haha). I used Microsoft Word and printed out a large font of a "K" and used this as my pattern.

I followed alllll the same instructions as above...

And in less than 30 min total (so glad I left the sewing machine all ready to go!) I had another adorable applique shirt!!!

 Love this!!!

I'm pretty proud of myself for wanting to try it out and actually doing it. I'm sure Zach's happy too b/c instead of spending $20 each on these from Etsy I made them BOTH for around $10 total! And I can reuse a lot of what I bought on future projects. I plan to get more fabric and try out different patterns...I'll post any tutorials of anything in the future I try, but I'm going to stick to applique for now. It's easy and super cute! If Blitzen's a girl then I do also plan to try out some pillow case dresses ;)

I'd love to hear how this works for you!!!