Positive and Negative Applique and Why You Should Do a Sample First

Everything is a learning experience. I have been using a lot of boiled wool fabric lately and wanted to do something like this for a while. Indecision has postponed it for months. I decided to jump in without sampling. If worse came to worst I can recut one front panel, right? Boiled wool is cheap, right? Oh, yeah: it isn't. Lots of oops in this post.

Here is the design drawn onto a lightweight embroidery stabilizer. I placed it on the wrong side of the fabric with most the fabrics layered on top, then finally the boiled wool jacket piece. I should have layered in stages. The velvet frays a lot and not prettily, so I wanted in under the wool. The silk frays in an attractive manner, so I was fine with it on top. However, I needed to make sure that no velvet edges were seen at all, even under the leaf edges so I had to trim out the velvet after the outer edge of the flower was cut. Oops.

(This placing of the stabilizer on the wrong side was a tip from Claudine at Adventures in Couture, who has been doing a lot of reverse applique lately.)

The silk dupionni was laid on top of the work. I did not want any boiled wool on the flower. The stitching was done in a straight stich and free motion foot on my Mega Quilter.

Leaves were stitched in sections. The outer was stitched forst, then the wool trimmed away then the inner lines were stitched and trimmed.

Three types of leaves. Another oops. I don't really like the lower leaves without the wool on them. Why didn't I do a sample again?

Also, there should be two rows of stitching around the slik. It is trimmed too closely for the silk not to fray away.

I think this piece is salavage-able. I will try to add some wool to the lower leaves and do something extra around the silk. I had planned to add some hand work anyway. We shall see.