How to Applique with Fusible Adhesive - One Block from Start to Finish

Hi, I'm Wendy from Shiny Happy World and today I'm going to show you from

start

to

finish

how to apply a

block

using printable

fusible

adhesive

. This is the pattern for a single

block

. I'm Hazel. I have tagged. all the pieces you are going to cut so that if you mix them with another bird block, you can keep the beak and belly separate. Many of the pieces are very similar in shape so this is from one of my patterns and what I have done is prepared it to use with a

fusible

adhesive

, which means that the patterns have already been reversed because you always need to use the image reversed when you use the hot melt adhesive because the glue is on. the back and they've also been broken down so that the belly piece comes out of here because what you're going to want is a little bit of extra fabric here to tuck under the belly piece, so I've already broken it down so that we have a little bit of space between all of our pieces, if you are using another pattern that hasn't had this happen to you you will only need to trace on the paper side of the fusible adhesive you will need to trace the inverted image of the pattern, then you want to trace the mirror image of how you want it the final image is seen.

It's done, so the first thing you're going to do is what I call rough cutting around everything. Pieces means you want to cut with a little bit of visible space, so you're not cutting right on the line, you're just cutting a little bit beyond the line, it doesn't have to be much, especially beyond the solid lines. I leave a little extra space beyond the dotted lines and you'll see why in just a minute, so let's cut out all of these pieces. This is a big enough piece to save because I can use it for a smaller piece and then cut around the belly cut around the tail again.

I'm going to leave a little extra space here where I have a dotted line and then I'm going to cut out the two eyes as one piece and the beak, so now that I have all my pieces rough cut, the next step is to merge them into the part back of the fabric, so let's

start

with the eyeballs before I lose them, they're going to continue. a plain black fabric that I've been using black for all the eyes of all the birds in this quilt so they all go away. Your fusible adhesive will be papery on one side and bumpy on the other.

The other side is the adhesive and it will melt when we iron it. The temperature at which you need to iron it is different for each manufacturer. Some of them want steam. Some of them don't want steam. Some of them want a very hot iron. Some of them want a very hot iron. If you want a slightly cooler iron, you just need to read the instructions on the package of whatever you have and then I make a rough cut around that piece, we'll cut it more precisely in just a minute. First I like to merge everything together so we can have eyeballs.

I'm going to take care of that beak before I lose that bit again. You're going to stick it on with the bumpy sticky side facing the back of the fabric. Look at the front and back. because what we're doing here is we're applying the glue and that's going to stick right on top. I'm going to use this kind of neutral cream color with some dots. This will be my bird's belly, so just hit it. First press a little if it has wrinkles, glue down, give it a little rough cut around, the pieces are a little easier to handle once they don't have a lot of fabric, my tail is It's going to be this dark blue fabric with some polka dots and this fabric doesn't really have any direction, it works in any direction, so I'm going to put it there in the most efficient way to use the fabric.

The next one you'll see, we're going to worry a little bit about the direction, there's the tail piece and now I just need the body and the body will go in this beautiful chevron print and since it has a defined direction. I don't want to leave it so that the zigzag goes crosswise. I really want them to go straight along the body, so I'm going to think about the placement and try to get that to blend together nicely. piece in place and then cut around it. Now we have all our pieces rough cut and now they are smaller and it will be easier for us to make our cut more careful, so let's start with the belly. but that's simple, this is all a solid outline, so I'm going to cut it right on that line all the way around and when you have a continuous line and you're making a smooth cut, try to make it as smooth as possible.

As you can, you don't want jagged edges here because this edge will be visible, so the belly is cut out. The tail now has a solid outline and a dotted line. The dotted line on all my patterns indicates where this piece is. I'm going to tuck behind another piece, so I never cut on the dotted line. I cut just a little bit further so I'll have a little bit to tuck underneath and you'll see when we put it all together what that does. I'm going to go and cut on the solid line. I'm going to cut right on that line or close enough depending on the pattern, you may or may not need to be super precise with your cut.

Mine are big, easy shapes that are pretty. Forgiving, so now the tail piece is cut off and I have a little bit that extends beyond the dotted line, so the beak is a solid line. I'm going to cut it out now that I have a beak and all of these pieces are labeled. This will help you if you're making your blocks as some kind of assembly line, you won't be mixing up your eyeballs, your tails, your bellies and whatnot, so these eyes are small, put them somewhere you can find them. Again later, but they're just simple ovals so they're not a difficult shape to cut out and then the last thing is the body and this is another one where we have some solid lines and some dotted lines so this time First I'm going to cut the continuous line by initially making a rough cut around the pattern pieces before fusing them together, allowing us to have adhesive all the way to the cut edge of the fabric.

Sometimes I see people who want to cut the pattern pieces before fusing them, they want to cut them right on the line and glue them and then try to cut the fabric to match the edge of the pattern piece and that is very difficult to do accurately even If you get a very close cut, you'll usually still have some threads on the edge, perhaps showing that you don't have the adhesive and it's just some threads that may come loose on the

finish

ed block, so now I'm going to do this. dotted line and just like on the tail piece, I'm going to give myself a little bit here that can be tucked under the belly piece when we glue it down, now that we have the body piece cut out, we're almost ready to assemble. the final piece. block, but I need to show you one more thing and this is important if you are tracing the pattern, make sure you trace any facial features on the pattern piece, even if you are not going to cut them out, and here is why I need to transfer that image and it is easier if it is on this adhesive.

It is very well glued. It will stabilize the fabric. I'm going to put it in a window so you can see once the light shines through it. It's very easy to see. those marks and I'm just going to draw a little circle inside each of these shapes. I won't draw it directly on the line because then I have to place my pieces exactly there like this. I have a little wiggle room, but I know. where the eyes are supposed to go and where the beak is supposed to go, you want to make sure you do that step before you remove the back, now it's time to glue it all together, so I have my block, now this is me.

I am using the Quilted you go technique on this quilt and I am doing it backwards so I have already quilted my block. You can see some straight line quilting when doing it before making the appliqué, meaning I didn't have any. To go around the appliqué to do it and I was able to make straight Zip Zip lines and that was really fun and easy, so now I'm going to apply it on top of this Quilt Block. You see the back, you can see the padding very clearly. start peeling off the pieces you're just going to peel off the paper and you can see that the back of the fabric is shiny and smooth now that the adhesive is fused to the back of the fabric and when we fuse it later with the block when we have finished attaching it, um, that's going to that glue is going to melt again and this time it's going to stick that fabric to the um, to the block, so now the glue, if you remember, it's got that little dotted line there, so that curve of the tail will hide under the body and I placed my bird in the wrong direction, so this is the time where you can really play with all your pieces.

You can also make the tail go higher if you wanted in my original. design, I have it pretty low on the body and that seems pretty well centered. I usually don't try to center things exactly and I like things to be a little off center sometimes, so now let's put the belly on there, take the back off, let's glue it on now, when I cut, when I left a little bit around from that dotted line, I left a little bit of an overhang that was going to show past the belly, so I just cut those corners off and now my belly is going to line up there, adjust that tail just a little bit once you glue this on , it's pretty stuck.

I've seen people do things where they reheat it and move things while it's on. It's still hot, but it's hard to do it before I put it on my face or anything else. I'm going to make a quick move to get these things in place and I'm being very careful not to move the iron. lifting it up and pressing it into place and I'm not counting seconds or anything like that right now. I'm just taking a quick hit. I'll come back and do it properly in a second when I have the features turned on. I just didn't want to.

I had those where I liked them and I didn't want to hit them, so now we're going to glue the beak on and I've got my handy fancy outline there and since I made it smaller. than the beak, I just need to make the beak cover that outline and we're good. The same with the eyes. Put one eye on, simply remove the backing and attach the other eye. Make sure everything looks good and now I'm going to do. fusing is real usually most manufacturers again it's different for everyone but most of them you glue it together pretty quickly to get the initial fuse and then the second fuse when you join fabric to fabric it's a little bit longer , so make sure you read all the instructions and don't assume the first few instructions are for all the adhesive because it's usually a quicker stroke and also a lower temperature.

For that initial, simply spread the paper on the fabric. I want to make sure I move the iron a little bit because most irons have little indentations on the bottom and this one has a pretty big one where the foot comes out, it has nice little ones everywhere and a big flat plate there with no indentations. not at all, but you want to make sure you get a nice even fuse, so you want to move it around so your bumps move and that's it. I like to let it cool before doing anything else with it and then.

All I'm going to do is go back around it. I'm going to make a normal, straight seam. Nothing sophisticated, nothing sophisticated. Sew just a straight stitch, all with black thread and I'm going to stitch all the way around this block and then I'll show I'll have a link to a blog post that goes with this video and it'll show a video, uh, I mean a shot still image of the finished block so you can get up close and see it very closely, so that's it. Now that I have discovered some products that I really like for hotmelt adhesives that are not too rigid and that work very well.

I really love this method for

applique

quilts. You can see that it is very fast, very easy and it allows you to play a little with the pieces because it is easy to move them, like moving the tail up and down, or you can lean your body a little on the block and it is very easy and fun to play with I'm Wendy from Shiny. Happy new world, see you next time.