How to make an appliqué with Silhouette

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This is one of those projects that I had {dreams} of making the minute I found out that Silhouette could cut fabric! I love appliqué work, I love hand stitching, I just can't bear the thought of cutting all the little pieces by hand, especially if it's a detailed design. But with the Silhouette the tedious part is over. Now, I won't trick you into thinking it was a quick project  - yes, the cutting part was done in an hour or so. However it took many trips to our playground to do the stitching while the boys were busy with the sand. Lucky for me, we have a sandbox right outside our door, so the kids would play with their trucks, pails and shovels while I would stitch away! Fun stuff!

I was inspired to do this project as a part of my living room make-over. I got this lovely Waverly fabric at Joann and made cushions for my couch. So I tried to make some apliques based on the beautiful design of the fabric.

What you need:

• patterned fabric - as inspiration for appliqué
• tracing paper and marker
• camera or scanner
• plain fabric (coordinating with the patterned one)
• Silhouette clean cut fabric interfacing (you could use the sewable one if you don't want to hand stitch your appliqué)
• Silhouette fabric blade
• Embroidery thread
• Silhouette Studio installed in your computer
• CAMEO will give you space for larger apliqués, like this one, but you could use the Portrait for smaller projects
• Sewing machine

Now here is the step-by-step:

• Use tracing paper on top of the fabric to get the outline for the design.

• Take a picture (or scan it). Open it in Silhouette Studio and use the "tracing tool" to get the cutting lines. I used the duplicate tool as well to compose the design according to the fabric. My final cutting lines were as follows. 

• Prepare the fabric that will be cut with the Silhouette. I used Silhouette's clean cut fabric interfacing and followed the instructions in the package. 

• Load the mat with the fabric side facing upwards and CUT! Oh, don't forget to change your blade to one that you use only with fabric. 

• Transfer the cutout pieces to the fabric that will be stitched, and iron. 

• Blanket stitch the appliqué onto the fabric. Of course, here you have a few options if you don't want to go the long way. You could always machine stitch it if you are using the sewable interfacing.

• Once the panel is done, use it to stitch the cushion (sorry about the dark picture, this was late at night and I was too excited to finish the project to set up proper lighting!)

And there you go!

Here is a closer view:

I am totally in love with it!

Thank you for stopping by today!