Applique embroidery is a widely known art in the garment decorating industry and has historical roots just like traditional embroidery. In applique designs, the embroidery patches consist of colorful layers of design that make a unique pattern. These designs act as a base for a fabric, as they are not directly stitched in the fabric. Applique embroidery is a separate artistic base attached to the fabric, giving it an additional appeal.
You can use this art form on home décor as well as on your fabric for better personalization of your routine wear. In this blog, we will explore applique embroidery, how it works, and what are the advantages of digitizing embroidery for applique designs.
What is the Purpose of Applique Embroidery
Applique designs are created on a foundation fabric, which gets placed on the main fabric, creating a more enhanced look. Applique embroidery stitching is either done by hand or with the use of machines. People around the world believe that adding applique to your fabric makes it more stunning than before.
Types of Applique Embroidery
Applique embroidery comes in all shapes and sizes, depending on the quality of the fabric and needs of the customer. This type of embroidery is not one-size-fits-all, as you can see from the following four main types of applique embroidery:
Machine Applique
Those digitizers who prefer accuracy with speed for their applique designs should prefer this type. Usually, businesses with shorter turnaround times select machine applique as their preferred type of applique design.
Fusible Applique
In this type, we use fusible webbing to attach fabric pieces to the base material with minimal hand stitching. It produces amazing results, portraying creative visuals to the viewers. This type of applique design is also the most feasible choice for projects with short deadlines.
Reverse Applique
Want to create innovative offerings for your customers through applique embroidery? Reverse applique is the type of embroidery to go for such requirements. These designs display a great popping effect of the layered fabric from the base fabric. In reverse applique, the digitizers place the fabric under their base material and then cut off parts of the top cloth and sew the edges down.
Needle-turn Applique
When we talk about needle-turn applique designs, we do not talk about the modern designs in machine embroidery. To create purely hand-made applique designs, digitizing companies use this type of applique technique. The conventional ways of doing embroidery might take time, but it offers the best quality on display.
Benefits of Sewing Applique Embroidery
Applique designs allow businesses to digitize embroidery that is personalized and offers loads of creativity. As a digitizer, you can play with your choice of designs and convert them into something even more appealing than the original design with applique embroidery. Below are the benefits listed for potential embroidery businesses:
Color & Pattern Versatility
One of the best things about applique designs is that they offer a vast amount of color choices and versatility to the customers. You can work with numerous colors and still finalize amazing-looking patterns. However, traditional embroidery allows you to create designs with a limited choice of colors, as not too many colors blend together in threads like in applique embroidery.
Larger Designs with Broad Scale
With the help of applique embroidery, you can create larger and prettier designs than before. For instance, preparing embroidery patterns for bedsheets might be a challenging task, but with applique embroidery, you can easily finish the perfect bedsheet designs. Attract your target audience with large-sized embroidery designs.
Texture and Dimensions
Adding texture and depth to your designs becomes easy with applique designs. Your applique patterns portray a 3-dimensional design to the audience, making your design sharp and attractive. Your apparel becomes more engaging with the help of quality applique digitizing.
How Applique Works?
Professional embroidery makers have their own set of steps to succeed in creating meaningful and appealing applique designs. However, to educate the beginners in this field, we have listed steps of how applique works, and these steps are the following:
Tracing Your Design
Find the right design for your applique design and trace the image for beginning the applique embroidery process. Convert embroidery from a picture to trace your preferred design. You can either purchase patterns from various e-commerce platforms or use free designs to begin with. Save the design and print it for the cutting process.
Cut Out
Roughly cut the outline of the traced design, ensuring there is a small border left. There is no cutting the border line of the traced image; you online have to cut out the outline of the shape.
Secure the Applique
Once done with the placement of your applique in the perfect place, place a hot iron on it. Pressing down the iron gently helps more than rubbing from side by side to secure your applique design and its position.
Stitching Time
It is now time to stitch around the raw edges of the cutout of your design. You can select the stitch type of your choice and finalize the project with beautiful-looking embroidery.
Contact Digit-IT for custom embroidery services at the most affordable pricing around the world. Get digitizing embroidery in the USA or anywhere in the world with our professional embroidery makers.