Design Pro Appliqué Mat
with instructor Steve Butler
Class 148
What is it? – Applique, what an amazing and beautiful fiber art form. What is it? Simply put, it’s the addition of subordinate decorative fabric motifs to a larger, supporting piece of fabric. It has applications to quilting, fashion, home décor and crafts. Appliqué can be elegant or simple and it can create real world, geometric or abstract schemes. Our creative medium is a seemingly unending array of available and ever evolving fabric colors, patterns and textures. Applique, by designed intention, can relate a story or simply project a meaningful image. But it’s that “design” part that gets to us sometimes. Putting it all together exactly as we’ve envisioned it can be a challenge. Of the three primary forms of applique, fusible applique is perhaps the easiest and most direct method. We simply apply all of those fabric cutouts to the base fabric and fuse them permanently in place. But how do we get all of those pieces, from the most simple to the most intricate designs, into the precise position that we’ve envisioned? Clover’s new Design Pro Applique Mat, that’s is how.
What does it do? – Fusible applique starts with a design template from a commercial source or maybe something original. We trace that design onto a quality fusible like Clover’s Wonder Fuse and roughly cut them out. These are fused onto the fabrics we’ve selected for our design and then cut precisely to the marked design lines. Now that we have all of the constituent pieces ready, all that remains is to put them in the precise position to achieve our creative intent. This is all easily accomplished with Clover’s Design Pro Applique Mat. The unique construction qualities of the Design Pro make this possible.
· It’s see through so we can transfer designs to our fusibles and position applique pieces with precision and without marking our background fabric.
· It’s heat resistant which allows us to build our applique design and then press the component pieces together.
· The surface has an adhesive type component to it which holds the pieces in place while we press them into our design.
· Once the applique design is complete, we can use the Design Pro Applique Mat to position it on our background fabric and then press to make that attachment permanent. · A final design component of the Design Pro is that once pressed, the applique design does not adhere to the mat, making it easy to remove.
How do I share it? – The Design Pro Applique Mat is an amazing tool that really supports fusible applique for all sewing genres from quilting to fashion to home décor to crafting applications. Creative expression is the ultimate goal of all sewers. The Design Pro makes that possible for all sewers from the beginning fiber artist to the most accomplished. Samples are always important and showing how this creative art form fits into so many different genres is essential. In store demonstrations and classes are icing on the cake. Showing how the Design Pro Applique Mat makes it all so fast and easy will make fans and devotees for life.