Appliqued Onesie Tips

I recently came across the most helpful tips I have found in a long time, and wanted to share them with you. Yes, you... if you are out there... I got no comments on my last post, so maybe you haven't been wondering if I fell off the face of the earth!  Ha ha! Oh well, if nothing else, this blog is a great place for me to keep track of my sewing and crafting projects!

Anyway, Terri over at A Creative Princess shared this post about machine applique back in March. I don't know about you, but whenever I have done machine applique on baby onesies in the past, I always had a hard time sewing them. Sometimes the onesie would bunch up, and it was always hard for me to see where I was sewing.

Terri shared two fantastic tips. The first one is to use an open toe foot on your machine when sewing appliques. That is probably common sense, but honestly, I never even thought about it. I just happened to find a clear plastic open toe foot at my local Wal-Mart for around $9.00, and boy has it made sewing easier. Now I can actually see where I am sewing, and it makes it so much easier getting around curves and corners.

The second tip Terri shared was so awesome and amazing and wonderful ... it has made a HUGE difference for me. She uses freezer paper as a stabilizer underneath the applique when she sews it on. All you do is cut a small piece of freezer paper and place it inside the onesie, with the shiny side towards the fabric. You don't need to iron it on or pin it or anything.. it stays in place just fine.

Since I have started using the freezer paper, I have had no problems at all with the onesie bunching up on me at all. Here is what it looks like after you have sewn it on:

This is the inside of my onesie. Notice that you need to have the freezer paper a little larger than your applique. Since you have put the shiny side of the freezer paper towards the fabric, it makes it much easier to tear off when you are done. To help it along, I used my seam ripper and made little tears inside my letter like this:

Here it is with the paper all torn off:

And here is the finished product:

No bunching or binding of the fabric at all. I also played around with the stitches and tried to make a tighter zig zag stitch and I think it looks pretty good!

Here is another one I made:

I cut the dump truck and sign out of some fabric I had and just sewed around it. I even put this little sign on the back of the onesie:

Cute huh?!  (Please ignore the small piece of yellow fabric I had to sew on there, my bobbin thread got all messed up and made a hole in the onesie when I tried to take it off the machine)

I will be using these tips from now on whenever I sew machine applique. Let me know if you give them a try and how they work for you!