It is so easy to make a wrong cut when working with two-layered appliques. It happens to all of us. You are so accustomed to cutting fabric away that, before you know it, you cut too much.

I did that recently when working with an applique that featured two layers of fabric. The top one was cut away, like the center of a flower, and the outside was scalloped, like flower petals. Two layers were placed in the hoop before starting to embroider. After clipping the middle fabric to the placement lines, I cut the outside (petal) fabric by mistake.

Now what?

Not wanting to pitch the project thus far, I took a deep breath and calmly thought of a solution. It was a sort of reverse applique.



First, I cut away the outside fabric down to the stabilizer.



Then, I placed a whole piece of the background fabric on top of the middle circle, put the hoop back on the machine, and stitched the first placement stitch again. That placed a circle of stitching around the middle of the background fabric.



Then, I removed the hoop and cut inside the circle of stitches, clipping fabric close to the placement line. You can see that, instead of the blue fabric being on top of the cream, it is now behind it. That still works great because satin stitching will cover the trim area and it will finish up just perfectly.

How have you turned a blunder into a blessing?

Debbie SewBlessed