BLOG

I’ve received a few questions lately about whether it’s possible to create an applique pattern from a drawing or clip art.

Yes!

You can create an applique pattern from just about any drawing – but you may have to do a bit of tweaking to the drawing.

Let’s take a look at this appliqué I did of a pattern from Mollie Johanson’s fabulous embroidery book Stitch Love.

This dinosaur was perfect because all the shapes that make up the image are already enclosed shapes. There are no “dead end lines.”

What’s a dead end line?

That’s what I call lines that end in the middle of nowhere – not making an enclosed shape.

See this sweet bear from Mollie’s book? Lots of dead end lines! I circled them all in red.

Mollie designed him for embroidery where dead end lines don’t matter. But let’s imagine the second you saw him you knew he would be perfect appliquéd on a pillow for your son (who you call Buddy Bear).

You can do it!

Just because it was designed for embroidery doesn’t mean you can’t appliqué this adorable bear. It just means it’s going to require that tweaking I mentioned. 🙂

I chose this bear because he needs a lot of different kinds of tweaks. Let’s start with the easiest – the dead end lines at his ears.

You can see where I “erased” the lines that extend into his head. The ears stick out enough to still be clearly ears, so that works. But what about those cute inner ears?

No erasing for them – I added the red lines to enclose them into cut-outable shapes. Also not hard – and I don’t feel like it interferes with the integrity of the drawing, so I’m ok with it.

Things start getting a little trickier with the arms. We’ll start with the bent arm. . .

For that one I re-drew the lines to extend them both to the edge of the body, making that arm a separate piece that would lay over the body piece. (I’d do it neater in real life because I wouldn’t be trying to draw with my mouse.)

Finally – that waving arm. That’s definitely the hardest bit. I experimented with erasing and drawing, but so much of the arm overlaps the body that erasing that top line really blurs/distorts the shape. It made it look like that arm was growing out of the side of his head!

What I finally did was actually cut that arm out and move it farther outside the body so that there’s less overlap.

See? I had to do a little erasing/adding to clean things up, but I think works well – again without messing up the look too much of the original drawing. He’s still immediately recognizable as a Wild Olive creation. That face!

Read my review of Mollie’s Stitch Love. It’s packed full of seriously adorable critter patterns and you could make a super cute quilt out of them!

Let’s look at one more example – this one of a child’s drawing.

When I stitched up my daughter Jo’s drawing of a dragon and a princess, it required very little tweaking.

Here’s the original drawing.

I would have been tempted to turn the head/neck/body/tail into one piece, but she had broken it into three pieces in her drawing, so I left it that way to keep the look the same. All I really did was “flesh out” the feet a little bit so there was green fabric behind the toes.

I also made all the back ridges one loooong piece. They’re all connected at the bottom, where the piece tucks behind the neck/body/tail. That didn’t change the look of the drawing, but it sure made the assembly of the appliqué a lot easier. 🙂

So there you go! A few tips to help you convert just about any drawing into an appliqué pattern.

Here’s a list of links all about choosing a quilt pattern – and even designing your own!

• Choosing a Quilt Pattern
• Free Quilt Patterns
• How to Work with Digital Patterns
• How to Print Digital Patterns When You Have No Printer
• Tips for Turning Any Drawing, Embroidery Pattern, or Clip Art into an Applique Pattern

Return to the Let’s Make a Quilt main Table of Contents.

Happy stitching!