Continued from page 1

Let’s Get Down to Business:

1.  Take a look at what you have.  I like to collect all the “mismatched” clothes in one place, so I can pair them up.  Be flexible and think a little outside the box about what pieces could go together.  For this project, I started with these.  Since the shirt is white, they can “match” on their own, but Firecracker isn’t thrilled about the plain white shirt.

2. Choose a motif.  If one of your pieces has a pattern, see if there’s a way to turn that into an applique.  In this case, the skirt had a design with layered hearts and flowers.  I decided to use the hearts because it was an easy pattern to copy.  If there is no obvious motif, then choose one and use a common fabric to applique onto both the shirt and pants/skirt to bring the outfit together.

3.  Make (or find) your pattern.  I did a quick internet search and came up with a basic layered heart picture.  I liked the shape of the heart, but they layers were a little too close together for what I needed, so I tinkered around with the sizes a bit and came up with this pattern.  (A printable version of the pattern can be found at the end of this post.)

4.  Choose your look.  There are a lot of ways to applique.  The two main ones I use are satin stitch or a straight stitch.  With a straight stitch your edges will fray a little after multiple washings, but is great for knits since they don’t fray.  Satin stitch will seal in your edges, so that most fabrics will not fray at all, but it can be a bit trickier to get the stitching to be even.  I used regular straight stitching for this project, but if you want more information and examples of satin stitching, you can see my post here.  If you don’t like to sew or don’t have a sewing machine available, you could also sew the edges by hand.

Go to page 3 for more