Reverse Applique Gallery

 My son received a homemade super hero cape for his 6th birthday last year.  The design on the back of it was accomplished by reverse applique.  It looked so cool with it's graphic impact and roughed up edges.  I had to learn how to do it!

Turns out it is soooo EASY!!!!  You just quilt together two fabrics and cut away sections of the fabric on on top.  Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but you can do it!  I promise!

The pic above and the pic directly to the right are actually the same purse.  I made a grey side with a print peaking through some sections, and I made the reverse side black with a more structured design of white showing through.

You can see all the random, ricocheting, top-stitching (or quilting) I did on the grey side.  The sections of grey that I cut out were randomly chosen.  The top-stitching on the black side is not so evident.  It took some time and planning to stitch around that pattern.  I drew it all out on a long piece of tear-away stabilizer and fused it to the top of the black fabric.  This worked as a good guide, although it was a tedious job picking out all the stabilizer from the stitching!

<===This is a diaper bag I made for my BFF.  The little heart on the pocket was crated by cutting out a heart-shaped hole in the red snakeskin.  It's a good example of how simple it is to make embellishments.  It would have been a major pain to create and hem a heart to sew on top of the flap.  Another tedious option would be to finish edges if a fabric heart with a satin stitch.  No way!  This looks just as neat and finished and was so easy.

Here's another simple example.  The orange is cut away to show the triangle of aqua beneath.==>

<==This is black canvas cut away to reveal blue corduroy.

I was going to make another checkerboard, but came up with this variation instead.  It is a more feminine version of the checkerboard.==> 

<==There's a lot going on in this one.  The black is cut away to reveal the purple.  Then, I put in some silver thread and glammed it up a bit.  Stars should be shiny, right?  In case there is some confusion, this is a pic of a messenger bag with the flap flipped up. 

This is a printed linen tapestry (or tea towel in the UK) that was revealed when I cut away the brown canvas on top of it.  From what I had been doing, this is a whole new way to use reverse applique. ==>

I need to cook dinner now, before my kids starve to death!  I promise to come back and proof-read this post later.  For now, enjoy and please let me know what you think by leaving a comment!

Happy crafting!

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