Fun Finishes for Raw Edges

When you applique a project, you often want some sort of a nice edge finish to your applique. Of course, if you're doing needle turn, if you've got that edge turned under nicely, you don't need anything else, but sometimes you're gonna want something sort of neat and tidy around the edge, especially if you're using raw edge applique or fusible applique. The first thing I'm gonna show you is my kittycat here, and as you can see, I have used a straight stitch right along the edge of his face and a little satin stitch to give him a smile and a nose, and that nice little straight stitch, which is so simple, it's just a regular stitch, gives it that nice clean edge and makes it look really pretty and tidy. Now this project, again, is fusible web applique. Only in this case, now it has that straight edge around the outside, that straight stitching, but if you look, all of these little eggs have some really pretty decorative stitching in them. It helps to hold them in place and really adds that special touch. The flowers over here have blanket stitch, as does the bow and the bunny tail, and the stems and leaves are just a simple straight stitch without any kind of decorative stitching. Again, this one is done with matching threads. So that pink for the straight edge on a pink, orange on the orange, et cetera, which just gives it a nice touch but doesn't stand out too much. Now on these, these are fused, again, they're fused in place, and then they're edged with a blanket stitch and a contrasting thread, a contrasting on the pink to carry that coloration into right into the blocks. And when I worked with these, I just used just a plain, old, ordinary, this is a black cotton thread, nothing fancy, nothing to it, but you may wanna use colored threads, and you can use just a plain colored thread. This is a rayon, which works nicely 'cause it adds that sheen. It's got that lovely orange. And this is a cotton variegated thread, and it might be a little hard to see. There you go. See the pink and the green? And that is really kind of adds a pretty touch too. So we're gonna go to the machine, and I'm gonna show you how to do this. I was showing you the beautiful stitching that's on this little quilt, and these special stitches that are decorative, and the straight stitching around the edge, and also the blanket stitch. So now I'm gonna show you how to actually do that on your machine. I've prepared this little piece here with, you know, just plain fusible applique. So these are all raw edge. I have my machine set on the straight stitch, which is the stitch you use every day whenever you're seaming anything. And I'm gonna go ahead and show you how to stitch inside the edge. But first, I need to put my glasses on because I just can't see to sew without them. All right. I'm just gonna start and stitch along the edge like this. Now, I have a needle down function on my machine, and I have that engaged because I want that needle to go down right at the point like that, and then I can pivot. So I'm just gonna take my presser foot up and pivot like this. And you can see the stitching that's already happened right there. And I'm just gonna continue in that way all the way around the edge. The one thing I'm trying to do is to keep my distance uniform between my stitching and the edge. I don't wanna get too close to the edge or too far away from it and have that look, you know, uneven and just not as pleasing. So I'm just gonna keep going like that. I've got pink thread in here. It's just a regular cotton thread. I'm using a little, what have I got in here? I've got Aurifil in here. And, but you can use any cotton thread that works well with your machine. You can use, it depends. If you're doing, this is a quilt, or, you know, if I want to wash it, if this is going to be something that I'm gonna throw in the washing machine, I always use cotton. Very rarely will I use a polyester. I do use metallics sometimes or rayons but not usually for something I'm gonna wash a lot. If I'm gonna wash it a lot, I use cotton because then I know it's going to behave the same way my fabrics are behaving. Okay, so I've gone back to the beginning where I started. I'm gonna let my needle up, pull it out. I'm just gonna cut my threads like that, and I'm going to pull up on those threads, pull the surface threads to the back so I can tie them off. And I'll just tie a knot back here and that'll lock those threads in place. But just so you can see what it looks like on the front. You see how pretty that is? Look at that. Doesn't that make that edge nice? And now the edge won't go anywhere. Even if it starts to ravel up or just kind of get a more fuzzy edge, the piece itself will stay there for as long as the fabric stays there. So that's a straight stitch. Now, another stitch that you've, that I was showing you is a blanket stitch. Blanket stitch, it's sort of a big buttonhole stitch. We'll do this, how about that leaf right there? I'm using a thread that's pink, so it'll contrast well and you can see what I'm doing. I'm gonna select the buttonhole stitch, or the blanket stitch, on my machine. On my machine, that's a number 15. So I've put it in. I'm gonna select the length of the stitch and the width of the stitch that I like. There we go. I suggest that you practice, you know, just take any little piece of fabric that's prepared the same way. Go ahead and fuse an extra piece or whatever you have to it and play around with your blanket stitch until you get just the setting you want, because you may want it wider, thinner, closer together and this is your chance to play. Once you decide what your setting is for a project, write it down on a piece of paper, because you don't want to have to go through that again. Okay. So, blanket stitch, what I want is I want the needle to come down just outside the piece that's fused. So I position my fabric that way. I'm gonna take a look. It's not quite there. I'm gonna move it until I can see there, that that needle is gonna go right down just outside my fusible, my fused piece. And I'm gonna go ahead and stitch. Once again, I'm engaging my needle down function because it makes life easy. If you don't have that on your machine, just go ahead when you stop and turn your flywheel to put your needle down when you pivot. Okay. So here we go. As you can see, it works. The blanket stitch stitches along the edge of the applique and then it swings over onto the body of whatever it is you're, in this case, the petal. Now, as you can see, I'm coming to the point of my leaf, and if I just keep going with the same width of stitch, it's going to end up crossing over it, maybe even crossing completely over the tip of the leaf, and I don't want it to look like that. So as I get close to the point, I'm gonna start making my stitches smaller. So right now I'm on a 2.5. I'm just gonna put that on a 2.0 and take one stitch. Okay, and when it moves forward, I'm gonna go down to a 1.5 and do the same thing, a little stitch, and when it moves forward I'm gonna go down to 1.0, and I'm gonna stitch that right to the point. Now, I'm on the point. To pivot, I'm gonna do the same thing I did when I was straight stitching. I'm gonna lift my presser foot, and I'm just gonna pivot my whole piece around like that until the edge of the shape is headed straight for the foot. That way, when the blanket stitch swings over the petal, it's going to be perpendicular to the edge. So again, I'm gonna go ahead with that 1.0 stitching until, there I've done one. Needle's gone forward. It's along the edge. I'm gonna go up to 1.5. One stitch like that forward, up to 2.0, and you will continue in this way until you get to what it may be you've got yours set at for. So now I'm back up to 2.5, and I'll just keep going around like this until I have the whole leaf done. I just love this. I have to say, I love blanket stitch. Okay. I'm heading into a curve for my leaf. So put my needle down. Just gonna pivot a tiny bit. Don't pivot when your needle is in on your shape. In other words, if the needle's on the leaf, I don't wanna pivot them because, what's gonna happen? The needle swings over, and when it swings back, if I've pivoted here, I'm gonna end up with a shape like this. I'm gonna end up with a stitch that doesn't look, you know, like two stitches together. It's gonna look like a pie shape, and you're not gonna want that. So pivot only when that needle's down on the outside of your applique shape. Okay. I'm just gonna bring that down, pivot a little more. Get around my curve. I'm really liking this. Normally, I would probably use a green or a variegated maybe yellow and green, something a little more, what's the word, something that is more in the same palette as the leaf, but actually this is kind of fun, and it's cheerful, and it goes along with the rest of the appliques on this one on this piece. Oops. There we go. Okay. Almost done. Look at this. Getting right around the leaf. And then I'm gonna pivot for this last stitch, and I'm gonna go right over that first area of my stitching. Now, I'm gonna bring the needle up, pull that out, and I would do the same thing, pulling the stitches, excuse me, pulling the threads to the back and tying it off. But, for right now just to show you, there's my leaf, see? I've got my blanket stitch right there. Right there, you can see one of those little V's I was talking about if you're not careful and you move it when it's on into the shape, But there you go. There's the blanket stitch. So one more I wanna show you, or several more I wanna show you, are decorative stitches. Now, most machines, almost all machines now, have an assortment of decorative stitches, and I'm going to use a few to decorate my eggs. So the way I do that, I'm looking at my machine and I'm gonna select a pattern that's on my machine. In this case, I'm gonna select hearts, and on my machine, that's number 35. And then, making sure as before, you have to make sure you have the right presser foot. If I have the presser for it's just the one hole in there for straight stitching, I'm gonna break a needle and have to change that presser foot anyway. So right now, I'm just gonna let the machine stitch away. Of course I have my foot on the pedal, but I'm trying really hard not to move the fabric myself. There, I'm come to the edge of the egg and I'm gonna turn it. Look at that! Can you see? Got hearts already. I'm gonna turn it around. I'll put hearts going the other way now so they'll be kind of upside down hearts. And I'm just gonna start that again, and then I'll go back and I will trim out any stitches that went over the edge, because my egg's pretty tiny and when I'm trying to align this, it's a bit harder to do, but the stitches are easy to take out. There. Look at that! Isn't that cute? So I can just cut my thread here, and I would cut this thread here and pull out any little extra. There you go. There's one. Let's take a look at another one. What shall I pick this time? How about, there's, I've got one that looks kind of like little leaves, almost like a vine, and it's number 29 on my machine. I'm just gonna see what that looks like on this pink flower, excuse me, pink egg. There we go. Oh, pretty! It's cute. You may want to do this, you know, where you experiment with your stitches on your machine before you actually start stitching on your piece. Oh, you know what I didn't do? I didn't leave that down. I'm gonna put that needle down so I can pivot. And it's not that I'm going to stitch along the same exact row. I just don't want the thread to be pulled too far when I'm stitching. So I'm gonna put that down. I'm gonna bring my needle back up and just move over. Okay. Let's see and do another row. Like I said, wherever it goes over the edge on this egg, because it's hard to, how are you gonna go to the edge of something that's appliqued and have it exact? A few stitches are easy. You just clip 'em and pull the extra thread to the back. Okay. Let's look and see. There, ooh! Isn't that pretty? I'm really happy about that one. So I can continue in this way to do any of the decorative stitches on my machine. I'm gonna show you what this looks like. There we go. Oops. So as you can see, my little piece is starting to take shape with my eggs and, you know, I've done several stitches. Now what I wanna do is show you something else, and this is free motion stitching. We'll just see how it goes. The first thing I need to do is change the foot on my machine. I'm taking this one off, and I'm gonna put on, this is called a darning foot. A darning foot, you may have a free motion foot, depends on what it's called, and this goes on my machine right here. Okay. Almost have it. It's tricky because I've gotta get this little arm up and over the little arm that goes, that moves. There we go. Okay. You know, this is so much faster when I'm at home. Isn't that just typical? There we go. There we go. It's on. Okay. The other thing I need to do if I'm gonna do any kind of free motioning, I need to drop the feed dogs. If you don't have the ability, if your machine won't drop the feed dogs, that's okay. You can get a cover that will cover your feed dogs. I'm just going to. On my machine, that just means I slide a lever over. These are the feed dogs, these things right here. They're the things that move your fabric for you. If you didn't know that, now you do. Those are feed dogs, and I'm dropping them, because they're not gonna be moving the fabric. I am, or at least I'm hoping I will. Okay, the one I'm gonna be working on is this egg right here, and what I'm gonna do, this fabric I used is already printed with little swirls, I'm gonna use that sort of as a guideline, and I won't hit it exactly but it kinda gives me the feel and it will accent the fabric I used. So to do this, make sure I have that thread up, and I'm just going to put it to a half point on my machine. On your machine, you'll have to look up and see exactly what the setting is for free motioning. In mine, it's to bring the presser foot halfway down. Then what I'm going to do, I'm going to go ahead, put that needle down in, and pull up, hold that thread. Whoops. It's trying to get away from me. I'm gonna pull that thread up so I have the bobbin thread up and out. There we go. Move all those threads out of the way. Okay. And now, like I say, I've got that presser foot halfway down, and I'm gonna just... Oh, you know what I forgot to do? This is a good lesson. I left it on the leaf stitch. So I'm gonna go back to a straight stitch. Oops. But now you can see if I make the mistakes for you, then you don't have to make them yourself. Okay. Now, here we go. I'm just moving the fabric over those swirls. I'm not worrying about those little tales of thread, because I can come back and I'll just cut those out. But as you can see, I'm kind of giving a little feel. It's a lot, I hope, like the fabric itself. All right. So I'm gonna move this over where you can see it better. Now, it looks kind of messy, but once I get some of these threads out of the way, there, like this, I'll just take that one out and take this out like that. Then I'll just cut those away. There, see how tidy it's looking? Much better. Of course, you've got this little thing where I started with my leaf. That was silly of me. But you can just get the idea. With practice, you can make this look really nice. You can actually get right on. But you get the idea that free motioning is another way that you can use a decorative stitch to adhere your raw edge applique. The next thing I'm gonna show you is satin stitch. The next thing I'm gonna show you is satin stitch. Satin stitch is a really wonderful way to finish your raw edge applique, and I'm sure you've seen it before. This is a quilt I made many, many years ago from a Laurel Burch pattern. It's wild and wonderful, and I just love it. And as you can see, on this flower or circle, whatever you wanna call it, I used a satin stitch to edge all of my fusible applique patches. On this outer circle, I used a wider stitch. On this, I used a narrower stitch. And these are rayon threads, but of course you can use cotton or polyester, whatever you think is best. And you can even see there's a little metallic over here. Now, when you're picking your threads, you can pick any number of threads that'll work just fine. This is a silk. It's really quite beautiful. It has beautiful luster. It's, you know, very luxurious and fun to play with, and it gives a nice sheen. And this is a metallic, which I actually used in that quilt. Again, it's nice and shiny and pretty. If you're going to use a different kind of thread than you're used to, what you're gonna wanna do is do some sample stitching first. Try like, for instance, the silk, go ahead and wind your bobbin, and then stitch on something that doesn't matter. Stitch, grab a piece of fabric that you can live without. Go ahead and fuse anything to it, any scrap, and stitch along the edges so you're actually doing that satin stitch on your quilt, and play with the thread and the settings, because you may have to adjust your tension a little bit, you may have to play with needles, you may need a needle with a bigger eye for the metallic to slide through without breaking. So go ahead and take the time to play with it, and once you figure out what works for your machine, write it on a sticky note, attach it directly to the thread before you put the thread away. So the next time you pull that thread out, you know what setting you need. All right, when I'm satin stitching anything, what I always do, because otherwise I don't want, the satin stitch can pull your quilt in, can pull in the little pieces, make it kind of rumply, and bumply, and wavy. So what I do is I put a stabilizer on the back. In this case, I pulled this off the shelf. It's a Sulky stabilizer. It's not very heavy. And what I like is that it's iron-on and yet I can cut it away when I'm done stitching. So this is one that I like. Any stabilizer that you're comfortable with will work just fine. Again, you may wanna practice with some, try out different kinds and find out what you like best. This one's fusible, but there are many stabilizers that you just baste in place either by hand or by machine. I just do it by hand quickly. But you'll find that a stabilizer's gonna really make your satin stitch look much nicer than using just stitching alone. All right. I have already fused my little flower in place here. I'm gonna bring my machine in so you can see what I'm doing. All right. I need my glasses. I can't sew without my glasses. All right, here we go. So the first thing I'm going to do, I need to make sure that I have, again, this kind of a foot that will allow to swing a zigzag stitch, and I'm gonna set my machine for a zigzag stitch. And then what I'm going to do is I'm gonna bring the length of that stitch all the way down. And you're, likes I say, you're gonna play with it. I have mine here at a 0.5, and I'll see if that's too close or, you know, maybe even not close enough. And then I'm gonna bring the width down on my machine to a 2.5. So the way I'm gonna start, first thing I need to do is bring up that bobbin thread. So I'm just gonna turn the flywheel and bring up the bobbin thread like that. Okay. There it is. So I have my bobbin thread through, and I have the top thread, of course, through. And now I'm gonna play with this until I get it to swing. There we go. That's swung inward, and I'm going to, I want this needle on the outside. So I'm just gonna run it through the stitch there. You see how that swing? Swing, swung. Moved, moved back. Okay. I want it on that outside. And what I'm going to do, there are different ways that you can start and finish off the stitching. One way that people do it is by taking several straight stitches, and then going into their zigzag stitch, and then at the very end, when they finish that shape, they're zigging, zag, zigzag back over those straight stitches. And that's one way to do it. I just go ahead and stitch, and then when I'm all the way around, I pull those threads through to the back and knot them off there. You can add a little touch of Fray Check on the back if you want. But if I were you, I mean, my advice is to put that Fray Check underneath the fused part. That way, you're not gonna have that bleeding through and looking darker. All right. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started now, and I'm just going to stitch. Now, I'm looking, I'm gonna... There, I wanna be right on that edge. And I'm going to engage the needle down function so I can pivot when I want. Okay, now this thread's not really showing you what I want it to show you because it's a pink, but I'm just going to get a little stitching in and see if you can see it. Now, what you can see is I'm rotating or revolving, sort of moving the fabric under the needle. Now I've come to a part where there's not a, it's kind of a valley shape. So I'm kind of working with that. There we go. To cover it. Oh, good! My pink's gonna show after all, It doesn't, you don't have to be perfect with this. It's going to hold that edge down even if you're not perfect. So there we go. Just carry on right on that edge. There we go. Now, one of the best ways to deal with it when you come down to that V shape, you just go straight down like that. And then I'm gonna stop with the needle down on the inside this time over that template, that shape, and then when I start zigzagging again, it's going to zigzag over part of the area that's already been zigzagged like that, and then I turn it again And just play with it. The more you do this, the nicer it's going to look. All right. So this isn't the best stitching I've ever done in my life. Gee, I wonder why. But you get the idea. You can see how that just stitches right down. It does eat up a lot of thread. So if you find that you have more thread than you can use, you can feel really virtuous and get rid of a bunch of it with satin stitching. So the next thing to see is how to finish up raw edge applique with your quilting. Another really nice way to edge stitch or secure fusible web applique is by quilting right through it. So this flower doesn't look like fusible web, as you can see, it's got these nice edges, but it is. It was stitched, turned, fused in place, and then held in place permanently with the quilting. So this whole quilt was quilted before the applique was put on, and I'm gonna show you how that's done. Here are the petals and the leaves for this flower. Now, as you can see, we've got this one here. Two petals were sewn together, and then it was turned inside out right through the slit like that. And when that's done, you have a petal like this one with a slit right there, right there in it. So what I'm going to do, I'm gonna take my fusible web, I'm gonna put it right there. I've cut a shape that allows it, allow the outer edges, to be free and yet will give me a way to adhere that petal in place. Now I'm gonna let that cool and let that cool. I'm just gonna bring up, I have some pre-quilted fabric so you can see how this will work. This lovely quilt was designed by Dorothy Ann Weld, and it's going to, it's appearing in the March, April issue of "McCall's Quilting" of 2012. So here I have, I have eight petals and, excuse me, four petals and four leaves. Here's the one I fused. I'm gonna take that paper off the back. There we go. Okay, and I'm going to just arrange these. Now, if I were doing this on the quilt, of course I would be looking at photographs to see exactly where they should be placed, but for right now, I can just kind of show you how this goes together. I'm just gonna form my flower like that, and I don't have to worry about that center staying open because it's going to be covered by a button, which is why this is sitting here. Okay, I have them all in place like that. All right. Now I'm gonna just fuse them. Okay, remember, my quilt's already been quilted at this point. I'll use a little steam because I'm trying to get through those layers. There we go. All right. Okay. So it's all fused in place. And then what I would do is go ahead and finish the quilting by coming back and quilting right in the center of each leaf and petal, and then finally just tack that button in place in the center. So as you can see on the quilt, there, it's detail stitching. So it looks like the veins of the leaf. Here, it's just echoing around that, that petal shape, and it's still loose around the edges, which gives it this nice kind of a, oh, I don't know, a whimsical feel, and yet it's really easy to do. It's not needle turn after all. So that's one of, one more little way to finish your fusible web applique, and I have one more to show you. And this is one of my absolute favorites. This is using hand embroidery to do a few little stitches and secure the edges that way. All right, I've gotta put my thimble on and my glasses so I can see what I'm doing. This is a block that I made for "Quiltmaker's 100 Top Designers Volume Four" magazine. And I have these little fused squares, and in the center of each one, I did a French knot. Now, the edges are not secured exactly, although they're fused in place and I don't expect them to go anywhere, but just in case something should lift, I have a French knot to hold it all in place. So, move that out of the way, And here's my little sample again. Now, if I want to do a French knot, what I'm going to do, I'm gonna show you one right here, in the center of this red circle I'm gonna come up through there like that, and then I'm just gonna wrap that once around and put the needle down, not through the same hole but right next to it. And I'm gonna go straight down. I'm using embroidery floss. This is three strands of cotton embroidery floss and an embroidery needle. Okay. Pull that through, and there it is. French knot. I'll show you another one. It's like a cluster in the center of my flower. So come up, the needle comes up, wraps around just once, and then I'm putting that needle down. Oops. It's easier when you can hold this on your lap. There we go. The needle goes down right next to the hole where it came up. I'm just gonna hold that floss taught and pull the needle through again. There you go. Another French knot. It's that easy. And just one French knot in the center will hold it in place if it decides it wants to lift in the dryer. So if that should happen, you take it out of the dryer, you can fuse it back down or you can, you know, straight stitch the edge to hold it in place. And it doesn't happen very often, but if you're like me and you wash your quilts a lot, it's just nice to know that you're covered. The other stitch I really like. And of course I have a knot here. Well I'm gonna go ahead and use this one. The other stitch I really like is blanket stitch. Now I've shown you a machine blanket stitch, but hand blanket stitch is pretty easy and it's a lot of fun. So I'm gonna show it to you on, I need something that's gonna contrast. Oh, how about that egg? That'll contrast nicely with the green. Okay, to do a hand blanket stitch, you pull up right along the edge like that, and what I'm going to do is go down in my template shape like that and bring the needle cross so it's just clearing. Do you see that? And I'm just gonna pull through like there. There you go, one stitch. These are pretty big stitches, but I want you to see them. So I'm gonna keep them big. Okay, and there you have it. Again, down in the template and holding the thread down outside, I'm gonna bring that needle so it comes into that loop. Do you see? It comes into the loop of thread right at the edge. The goal with hand blanket stitch, you want a uniform size and distance between your stitches, and a little practice will make that easier. You also want this stitch, that one, to be perpendicular to that edge, just like that. And then you knot it off by going to the back, bringing the needle to the back, and just tie a knot. And that's it. So those are some of the ways I use to finish the raw edges of fusible applique. I love fusible applique, and I like having my edges secure. So hope you have fun with this. It'll really make a difference on your quilts.