Iron On Interfacing for Opaque Fabric

Completing projects using white, thin or light fabrics for applique can be a little tricky.

Using our Santa Table Runner as an example we'll show you a handy tip we've found to ensure you get the best results for your projects.

Often you will find when using a light or white fabric that your background, especially if that is quite a patterned fabric, will show through your applique.

One of the best ways we have found to combat this is lining our white, light or thin fabrics with an iron on interfacing.

Start off by getting a print out of your PDF applique pattern. This will ensure you have an idea of the size of each fabric piece you will need for your design.

Cut out your light/white fabric pieces for your applique a little bit bigger than the pattern pieces.

Then cut a piece of iron on interfacing just slightly smaller than your piece of fabric.

Tip: The interfacing is cut slightly smaller than the applique piece so that when you iron it on you do not get any of the glue on your iron.

Iron the interfacing onto the wrong side of your fabric, using a low/medium temperature steam iron (about 260F or 126C).

Once you have all of your white/light applique pieces pressed you can move on to cutting this fabric following the pattern for your applique.

For our Santa table runner after the interfacing was applied we added a fusible webbing onto the back of the interfaced fabric and then cut it out using our cutting machine. We have lots of tutorials on how to do this on the sewswpea.com website under tutorials.