Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to our fourth textile lesson.

Today our question is what is appliqué? This is a very different aspect of textiles.

And today in today's lesson, we're going to find out about what it is, and then we're going to have a go at making our own appliqués.

It uses lots of the same skills that we've been learning about so far, but produces an end product that is completely different.

So far in our lessons we have learned about what textiles is, we have learned about some of the different ways that textiles is made.

We have made our own textiles and done some weaving and we've begun to master the skills of sewing.

I'm hoping that by now you've begun to understand what a rich and diverse medium textiles is and you've begun to enjoy it as much as I do.

I'm really looking forward to teaching this lesson today.

So should we get on? So this is the equipment you're going to need for this lesson.

You're going to need, a sketchbook that might be a book or just some loose sheets of paper that you stick together later on.

A pencil or something to write with, or draw with.

Some scissors, some pins.

Now we've not used pins before and they have got a very sharp end on one end, so be careful when you're using those.

You're going to need a needle, some fabric and some thread.

Now as I've just said we are using pins and pins have a sharp end.

We're also going to be using scissors and a needle.

So you will need adult supervision for this lesson.

And as I have already said, be careful of the pins because they have got a sharp end and I don't want you to hurt the end of your fingers.

So in today's lesson, we're going to find out what appliqué is.

We're going to learn how to design our own appliqué.

We're going to learn to appliqué, and then we're going to create our own sample of appliqué.

So it's all about appliqué today.

We're going to find out what it is, and then we're going to have a go at doing it ourselves, in step by step processes.

And our key words are the word appliqué, which is adding shapes of fabric.

A patch, which is a small piece of fabric.

A template, which is a paper shape used when we're sewing.

And a pin, a piece of metal used to hold fabric.

Now we've not used pins before, and they look a little bit like a needle.

Only a needle has a hole and eye at the end of it, doesn't it? And a pin has a novel at the top and we call that novel a head.

All right, and they have got a sharp end because they are designed to go through fabric to hold it in place.

So should we get on and do something.

I would like you to start a drawing warm up now.

My name is Louise, but everybody calls me Mrs Creane when I'm at work.

And obviously my initial one is an L.

So on that piece of paper I have drawn an L not a skinny one but a nice fat sort of bubble L.

And what I would like you to do is to see if you can do something similar.

How many different ways could you draw your first initial? I've done mine in one way, I bet I could draw it in different ways.

Can you think of at least six different examples in your sketchbook? Look, I managed to think of it.

And can you see each time I drew it it got a little bit more strange and a little bit more weird.

We're trying to think about now ways of drawing our initial that are interesting and visually sort of unusual.

Pause the video now and see if you can find six or draw six different examples in your sketchbook, and I'll see you when you've done that.

Hello, how did you get on? Let me see.

Oh, wow.

Well done, you have done that very well.

This is what I drew.

That was my beginning sheet when I just had the one L and look, I thought of all those different ideas.

I tried to make it as curly and as interesting as I could.

Look, I think that's my favourite.

I like the fact that it's a bit strange but it's still a letter L.

So, what's appliqué? Let's have a look.

What can you see on this cushion? Can you see the letter H? Can you see that it's got a border round the outside? Its got background fabric, isn't it? That's checks.

And it's got a fabric appliquéd on the top, and that was what appliqué is, where you sew some fabric onto the top of a background.

So we would say that letter H had been appliquéd onto the background of the checked fabric.

There we go.

And you can see there, can't you? That's the corner of the H.

You can just see the little tiny stitches that have been used to hold it in place.

Can you see? They're very small, aren't they? So, what can you see in this picture? Look carefully.

I can see an elephant and a bird.

And if you look at the elephant and the bird, pieces of fabric have been used to make them, haven't they? They have been appliquéd on top.

And if you look very carefully around the edge of the elephant and round the edge of the bird, you can just about make out the stitches that have been used to hold them on.

What's happened is that the person who made this has cut out the shape of the elephant, and then they have stitched them on to the fabric in the background.

They have sewn them on top.

And that's what appliqué is.

Appliqué a little bit like making a collage where you have different pieces of paper that you stick together, only in appliqué you have different pieces of fabric, rather than glueing them together, you sew them together.

Appliqué is often used in textiles in a decorative way to add detail or to add interest to something.

Look at this skirt.

Can you see, it would have been quite a boring skirt just a plain green skirt, if it hadn't have had anything else on it.

Can you spot the appliqué? Yeah, I expect you have, haven't you? You've realised the band around the bottom of the skirt has been appliquéd on.

That's a different piece of fabric.

And look here's another example.

Can you find the appliqué in that one? Yes, you've spotted it, haven't you? It's the band at the bottom.

And can you see there's the shape of a cat and dogs and all sorts of animals in there, isn't there? They have been appliquéd on.

They've been added onto the top of the background fabric.

Appliqué, the word appliqué means to apply.

And the letter I has been applied appliquéd to the fabric.

So there's blue check in the background, and the letter I has been appliquéd applied on top.

The shape that is applied is called a patch.

And that was one of our key words, wasn't it? Patch means a piece of fabric.

Only in appliqué, the patch, the piece of fabric that you sew on is always cut into a specific shape.

It's not just random, it's a shape of something and in this case it was an I, and the ones that we've already looked at there was an elephant, wasn't there? And a bird.

So that they are all called patches.

It's just the patch can be cut into an unusual or an interesting shape.

There is the I, and that is the patch.

What can you see in this picture? Can you spot the patches in this picture? I can see a boat and some clouds.

Yes, look and the clouds have been appliquéd on.

They are the patches.

Can you find any others? Yep, there's the sail and look the boat.

They've all been appliquéd on, haven't they? They've all been sewn on top.

So each of those pieces is a patch, and the patches have been appliquéd onto the background.

And if you look at the background at this piece of cushion it's all made of different pieces of fabric.

They've all been joined together to create a picture of a boat on the sea.

And there it is.

And if you look carefully at the boat, you can see the little tiny cross stitches, little stitches made out into a cross shape that holds the boat in place.

And that's how appliqué works.

You sew the patch onto the background.

How has this picture been made? This has been made by an artist called Bev Williams and she uses appliqué in her work.

If you look for it carefully, first you just see a person.

But if you look more carefully still, can you see this shape of an aeroplane that has been embroidered on top? Now the person has been appliquéd onto a background fabric.

And then on top of that, she has appliquéd the outline of an aeroplane.

And this is a piece of work exploring the RAF and the Air Force.

And if you look in the background, all sorts of little pieces of blue cloth with writing on them have been appliquéd on as well.

So this is a multi-layered piece of appliqué, lots and lots of pieces of fabric joined to the background.

It's quite beautiful, isn't it? Appliqué involves creating patches or pictures using patches of fabric.

What do you think? Is that true or is that false? What do you think? Well done, I expect you got that right.

It's true, isn't it? Appliqué does involve creating patterns or pictures using patches of fabric.

Let's have a go at doing this ourself.

Now it's going to be our turn.

There is an example, as an inspiration for us as a starting point.

And we're going to have a go in this lesson of making our own appliquéd initial.

Our own initial which will be appliquéd onto some background fabric.

We're going to use this as our starting point.

Think carefully about what shape you would like your initial to be.

And we did that work at the very beginning of the lesson, didn't we? Where you drew your initial in lots of different ways, we did that because I knew we were going to need it now.

Look carefully at the shapes and think which one do you like best.

Now word of warning here.

Pick the letter that you think you can do the best.

So it might not be your most ornate one, it might be one that you can cut out and is big and bold.

You don't want it to be too skinny either, because if it's too thin it's going to be too tricky to draw.

You want it to be nice and plump.

So let's have a go at making our own appliqué.

You're going to need two pieces of fabric, preferably with different colours.

Now I've got felt there.

Do you remember at the very first lesson we talked about felt and how felt was made? And I said one of the qualities that make felt particularly useful, is the fact it doesn't fray.

And that's why I've chosen to use that for my appliqué.

Now it doesn't matter if you haven't got felt and if you have got a fabric that frays.

If you think about those examples of appliqué that we've already looked at, they had frayed edges, didn't they? They just added to the way the work looked they sort of added to the qualities of the piece of work.

So if you've got fabric that isn't felt and it just fray at the edge, that's fine.

Just take advantage of that quality of the material and make it part of your piece of work.

You do need to have a bigger piece.

And if one piece is a bit smaller I would maybe use the smaller piece to be your patch.

Okay, so think carefully, which one do you want to be the background and which one you want to be the patch? And as I said I would use the smaller piece to be the patch, and the bigger piece to be the background.

Now what you need to do next, is to cut this one that you're going to have as the background, to about 25 centimetres square.

So that means that along the top of your piece of fabric is going to be 25 centimetres, it's going to be 25 centimetres down the side, along the bottom and up the top.

So it's going to be a square and each side of the square is going to be 25 centimetres, roughly big.

If your piece of material isn't big enough to have it as 25 centimetres, that's fine you can make a piece of work that's a little bit smaller.

Not a problem at all.

Just ignore my measurements and make it as big as you can make it square.

If you've got a piece of paper that you can cut into a square, that's fine.

You could have a rectangular shape, couldn't you? Then you need to take your patch, and you need to cut that into about 15 centimetre square.

So it's smaller than your background.

And that's what you're aiming for it to look like.

So you've got your background piece, and you've got a border all the way around the outside and your patch can fit in the middle nicely like that with a board around the edge, all right.

So you've got one which is bigger one, and one which is smaller.

Now you're going to pause the video, and go and cut your fabric making sure you've got adult supervision 'cause you will be using your scissors.

So make your background nice big and your patch a little bit smaller.

Go and do that now and shall be waiting for you.

How did you get on? Do they sit together like that with a border around the outside? Good.

If they do, we're ready to keep going.

So you've got your background and you've got your patch.

Now I'm going to call them the background and the patch.

So keep in mind which piece is which you don't get them muddled up, otherwise you're going to get in a bit of a pickle later on.

Ready? Let's move on then.

So we're going to create our patch first.

So the first thing you need to do to, is to put your background somewhere safe for later on.

You don't want to accidentally cut it.

I know before I've put my two pieces together and accidentally cut the background as well as the patch.

That's not something you want to do.

So put the background somewhere well out of the way so you can't accidentally cut it.

And you want to cut a piece of paper, so that it's exactly the same size as the patch.

Because we're going to use that piece of paper as our template.

Now we always do this in textiles because fabric tends to be expensive, whereas paper is a bit cheaper and easier to get hold of.

So rather than drawing straight onto the fabric and risking ruining it, we're going to make a template out of the paper first.

So if the first time it doesn't go wrong we can try and try again, but we've saved our piece of fabric and not spoiled it.

Now what you need to do, is to draw your initials the letter that you chose you wanted to do, onto that piece of paper.

Not little teeny tiny in the middle, it needs to be nice and big like this.

Can you see? So my letter L goes right up to the top and fills the piece of paper, because that is the size our initial that we appliqué on is going to be.

We're going to cut that out in a minute and I'm going to have a patch that's an L shape.

So it needs to be as big as possible, and as fat as possible to make your life easier later on.

Pause the video, and make sure you've got your piece of paper that's the same size and you've got your letter, your initial drawn on your paper.

So this is what you need to do.

You need to have your scissors, you're going to need some pins and you're going to need your initial and your piece of fabric.

Now just check that your piece of paper does fit on top of the fabric nicely.

Yep, it did there I've double checked that.

So I'm going to cut my initial out now using my scissors, and I'm very carefully going around the edge making sure that I've cut it all out nicely.

And that piece of paper is then our template, and we're going to use that to help us in a minute, to cut out our fabric, that our fabric patch is the right shape.

Now if you look when I'm cutting here, I decided it was a little bit skinny in places I've made it a tiny bit fatter as I've cut it out, just to make sure that I've got enough fabric later on.

There we go, get rid of the rubbish.

Now you sit your letter, your template letter on top of the fabric like that.

Nice and in the middle, but not completely in the middle so it's to the top to the side, so you don't waste any fabric but it is completely on the patch, on the fabric patch.

And you're going to use the pins carefully.

Can you see how I did that? You sort of put the pin through, mind your fingers, and then you bend the fabric and push it back over so that the pin is now holding the patch onto the paper patch on the fabric patch in place.

Can you see how that works? Right, now get a coloured pen and you're very carefully going to draw around the outside of your paper template.

You're marking the fabric.

So in a minute, you'll know where to cut.

And you're going to go all the way around the outside, that's it.

You see how I've done that? Draw all the way around the outside.

Lovely.

Oh yeah, now you can take your pins out carefully again 'cause they've got sharp ends, and you can take your paper template away because now you've got the letter L or whatever letter yours is, probably not an L, and you're going to very carefully cut out that letter from your patch fabric.

Now this is quite important.

You need to make sure that you cut along the line especially if you've used a dark colour, because you don't really want that markings to show.

So when in a minute you choose your pen I would try to choose a pen that shows but isn't isn't so dark that it's going to spoil your work if it does show.

And you going to cut carefully along that line, all the way around the outside.

And so you've got your patch now in the letter that you want the letter shape that you need in.

There almost finished, keep going around the outside, cut it out carefully.

Can you see how I'm using the middle of my scissors not the end so I've got a nice smooth edge to my letter.

I'm just going to get rid of that little point 'cause I don't like that.

Put all the pieces out of the way.

And there is my patch.

There is my letter L in a patch ready to sew on in a minute.

Now, what you need to do is to stop the video and go and do that yourself, and I'll see you when you've done that.

So did you manage that? Brilliant, well done.

Make sure that your patch fits nicely on your background fabric.

Now you've got an important decision to make.

Now you need to decide where you want your patch to go.

Do you want your patch to sit in the corner of your background fabric? Would you like it to be at a strange angle in the middle of it? Or would you like it to just sit in the middle like that? Nanny and I decided I wanted to sit mine in the middle like that because it gave me more choices later on.

But if you think that's a bit boring, you can do the others.

Just bear in mind that when we do some work in our next lesson, it's going to change the way the design works.

And make sure you really like the ways that the letter sits on top of that background fabric.

And then you are going to follow the instructions in this next video.

So what we need to do next is to pin it so it won't move about.

There we go.

There's my patch, can you see? And there's my background fabric.

And I'm carefully going to decide where I want the patch to go.

I think I want to in the middle there.

I'm going to use the pin, now remember, it's got a sharp end and I'm going to put the pin and hold the patch in place by pinning it in the corners.

Can you see? So pin it carefully, so it won't slip about when you're using it.

You probably want enough pins so that the whole thing's in place, but don't have so many that you're going to hurt yourself every time you pick it up.

All right, check that that's sitting nice and flat.

And then you need to get a needle and a thread and you need a knot at the end of your needle.

And you come up underneath the patch, okay? And you think carefully, and you might not get there straight away and you want to come up sort of near the edge of your patch.

Can you see that? And what you're going to do is just to sew around your letter, around the edge of your patch just to hold it in place.

You can see you, can't you? That the felt that I'm using is quite stiff, and it's a bit hard to push the needle through in places.

Sometimes fabric can be like that.

So you just very carefully, now remember, where you push the needle in will determine how long the stitches.

So you don't want to push the, you want nice and even sort of neat stitches because that adds to the way your piece of work will look.

You might like really big stitches, or you might like stitches that are a different colour to your background, that they show.

I've used a pair of blue here I think on the yellow so that you could see them.

So that's another thing you need to decide.

What kind of fabric and what colour thread are you going to use to sew your letter, your patch onto your background? And you're going to keep sewing, and you're going to sew all the way around the outside.

Once you've sewn a section, you can take the pin out.

Can you see I've taken the pin out there because I didn't need it anymore.

So I'm going to keep sewing, all the way around until I get round the outside.

Don't worry I'm not going to make you watch all of that 'cause that would take a little bit of time, wouldn't it? Now remember if you go wrong with your sewing you can just unthread your needle, unpick it, pull it out and you can start again, if you make a stitch that you're not quite happy with.

All right, and I'm keeping on going round the edge all way around the outside, trying to keep all those stitches the same size.

All of that is the tricky bit there.

This was very strange for felt to sew with and I don't think my needle was quite sharp enough.

There we go.

Can you see? I've begun to sew it.

Now what I will do is keep going so I've sewn all the way around the outside then I can take all the pins off.

So this is what mine looked like when I'd finally finished sewing all the way around the outside, and I had taken all pins out.

It's your turn now, you're going to see if you can sew your initial, your patch onto your background.

Try and keep the stitches nice and even, and you're going to pause the video and I'll see you when you get back.

How did you get on? This is my finished work.

Did you manage to sew all the way around the outside? Was your felt as tricky to sew as mine was? Was it stiff like mine, or were you using something different? Hold to top so I can see.

Wow, well done you have done well.

This is my finished work, and as you could see, I decided to sew round the edge in pale blue.

I'm really pleased with the colours I chose.

As you know, I like the colour blue, don't I? So I was going to like this one, wasn't I? I liked the way that the two shades of blue work well together.

I'm pleased because I managed to keep my stitches all the same size, roughly all the way around the outside and they're sort of evenly space, aren't they? Under the same distance from the edge which makes it look nice and tidy and even.

But I do think it's a bit plain.

I wonder how I could add some interest to it.

But I do like the kind of thread that I used.

I think that looks good.

Now you're going to use your sketchbook and you're going to record what you think about your appliqué.

Now this time I'm going to say do not stick it in your sketchbook because we're going to need this next week.

Do you remember I said, I think mine is rather plain.

Well in our next lesson we're going to see if we can jazz it up a bit, and we can make it a bit more interesting.

You might in your sketchbook though want to do a little sketch, a little drawing of what it does look like, so you could label it and say what you think.

Or you might even begin to think about what you could do to it to make it look more interesting.

So don't stick it in your sketchbook, but record in your sketchbook what you thought about your appliqué.

Go and do that now pause the video and I'll see you when you've come back.

Well done for working so hard in this lesson.

Hopefully now you know what appliqué is.

You might want to go off and see if you can make a picture of your own like the elephant that we looked at.

Good luck.

Next lesson you're going to need your work from this lesson, so keep your initials somewhere safe, and in our next lesson we're going to see if we can decorate it and make it even more impressive than it does already.

You might want to see if you can find some beads or some buttons, some sequence, or just see if you can find some different coloured threads that you can use.

If you can only find some of those things that's fine, if you can't find any of those things that's also fine I will show you how you can do it anyway.

I hope to see you then.

Take care, bye.

If you'd like to share your work with me from today, and I'd love to see it, then you can ask your parent or carer to share it on the addresses below.