Tutorial: Applique to cover rips in clothes

Last July the daughter of a good friend of ours was getting ready to head to the Galapagos (lucky thing, her!). While her mother was ironing her things for the trip she accidentally melted a bit of her versatile polyester pants which were going to be indispensable during the trip. So she brought the pants over to me, hoping for a quick fix. (Quick as in right then and there while the kids were waiting for me to finish so we could watch a movie together. Hence the limited number of photos!)

I immediately thought of adding some sort of patch. From the proposals I made, the girl perked up when I suggested making a flower patch. She perked up even more when I showed her my fabric scraps and told her to pick out the ones she liked the most. While she was deciding, I drew a petal and a circle on the back paper side of my Heat ‘n’ Bond Lite (the best applique material I’ve ever used). I folded the paper accordion style to cut out six petals exactly the same size and then just the one circle for the center of the flower.

I then ironed the pieces onto the back of the chosen fabric according to the Heat ‘n’ Bond instructions.

I wasn’t sure if the fusible adhesive would stick to the other side of the leg through the holes, so I cut out another piece of scrap fabric (recognize that fabric?) big enough to go under the whole flower…

…and I stuck it inside the leg, positioning it under where the flower would go. In the end this step wasn’t necessary as the adhesive didn’t stick to this scrap and I just pulled it back out before sewing, but you might want to take this precaution anyway just in case.

Next I cut the fabric along the edge of the paper and placed them over the pants so as to cover all the melted holes and look more or less even.

I then removed all but one petal, removed the paper backing from it and ironed it down. I then continued to iron the other pieces down one by one, being careful to keep the right arrangement. As experience had taught us that these pants could be melted, I ironed at a lower heat with an ironing cloth over the pants so as to avoid further disasters. The bond this way wasn’t as strong as it would’ve been using a higher heat directly so it was absolutely necessary to sew down the edges.

As the kids were getting restless at this point, I sewed a very quick (and imperfect) zig zag stitch around all the petals and then around the inner circle of the flower. I wouldn’t have chosen this combination of fabrics honestly and I probably would’ve been able to do a much better job if I’d had more time, but when I showed the result to the girl, she immediately exclaimed, “È bellissimo!” And it seems that those pants got lots of use in the Galapagos the following month!