EPP Basics: Applique

Let’s talk about appliquéing. This post is going to specifically talk about appliqueing a grandmas flower garden block (made of 1″ hexies).

When you have your fabric background block ready, your papers popped out, and your EPP block ironed flat, you are ready to pin your block down and applique it.

You need to make sure that you block is almost perfectly centered. You can use places on your background block to help you (like image below) or you can grab a ruler and measure from the edges of your EPP block to the edge of your fabric background block. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to get it perfect, but when you first start appliqueing your block can end up a little cricked sometimes once you applique it on, so you want to start at a pretty centered place.

Once you have it centered, you need to pin your block down. I usually put a pin in the top, then on the left side, bottom, and finally the right side.

You want to make sure that you are keeping the block flat as you pin and not stretching it. Make sure you are not using dulls pins, the one time I tried a dull pin I ended up with a very cricked block when I was done pining. I ended up repining it and throwing the dull pin away.

When you finish pinning check that your block is still centered and that it is laying flat. If it is popping out, or doesn’t seem flat, repin it because it will get worse once you start sewing.

You can machine or hand applique blocks. The rest of this post will be talking about machine appliqueing blocks.

Machine Applique

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give about machine appliqueing shapes with hexies is to start at the place pictured below. You want to be in the middle, or upper middle, of a side right after the point on the hexagon, before the indent where hexagons meet (like pictured below).

This is actually super important because it is hard to overlap your stitched a little if you start exactly on the corner.

The biggest deal though is that if you end your stitches after an indent, your block tends to get wonky. It is way easier to keep things flat if you start here, just take my word for it.

You want to be maybe an ~1/8 of an inch from the edge. I like having the edge of the block aligned with the center of my pressor foot. I think having the pressor foot pressing down on the EPP block and the background square helps keep things flat and aligned, but I have no proof and it could just be a conspiracy theory.

Sew to the point where the hexagons meet.

While you are sewing I keep my hand flat and to the left of the pressor foot to kind of keep the block flat and prevent any pulling. The biggest thing is that you keep things flat while you are appliqueing and prevent any bunching, pulling, stretching, etc.

When you get to the point, keep your needle down. Lift your pressor foot up. Turn your project where your pressor foot is now lined up with the other side. Put your pressor foot back down.

Sew to the edge and repeat. Keep going until you finish your block. Make sure you overlap your stitches a little bit for durability/stability. Make sure you don’t stretch or pull the fabric, but that you keep thing flat.

Then you are done! Ta da!