Make Your Own DIY Football Appliqué Tailgate Towels

-Brother Sews Blogger

Football season is here! Let’s score big with your home team and create DIY football appliqué towels for your next tailgate party. Applique is a sewing technique where fabric patches are sewn on a fabric foundation. The machine covers the raw edges of the patches with a decorative top-stitch. Because the applique process looks so professional, it might seem intimidating at first; but once you learn the steps, it’s easy to create your own one-of-a-kind projects. You can put applique on almost anything like onesies, blankets, handbags, shirts, aprons, pillows and more.This is a simple way to spice up your everyday kitchen towels. Read on to learn how to make football towels and get your game on!

Supplies:

• Brother sewing and embroidery machine
• Kitchen towels
• Football themed appliqué design
• Decorative fabric
• Embroidery thread
• Medium weight tear-away adhesive stabilizer
• Fabric adhesive (optional)
• Fusible interfacing
• Fabric scissors
• Appliqué scissors
• Rotary cutter & Straight edge (optional)
• Measuring tape
• Iron

Make it:

First you will need to prep the piece of decorative fabric: Cut a piece of fabric and a piece of fusible interfacing the same size; just a bit larger than the applique layout.

Iron the interfacing on the back side of the fabric according to package directions. Set it aside.

Hoop the tear-away adhesive stabilizer with the sticky side facing up and peel off the top coating exposing the adhesive.

Depending on where you want the applique design, lay the towel over the hoop and on top of the adhesive. Press it into place.

Set up the appliqué design on your machine. Import the file you are using and determine the placement and size.

Hit the green button and let the machine do the work. It will make the placement stitch outline of your design first.

Once that is done, place the prepared piece of decorative fabric over the outline, you can use a little bit of fabric adhesive to hold it in place or you can keep it steady with a light fingertip touch until the first few stitches are completed. Lower the presser foot and the machine will make the placement stitch on top of the outline.

Remove the hoop from the machine and using your small appliqué scissors, trim away the excess fabric around the outer edge of the design.

It’s important to keep it on a flat surface and trim close to the placement stitch but be careful not to cut the thread.

Note, if you have more than one area using different fabrics, you will repeat those steps, placement stitch outline, lay down the fabric, placement stitching, and trim.

After that, the machine will do the top stitching or satin stitching to finish the design. Change the thread color when needed.

Take the towel out of the hoop and carefully peel away the stabilizer.

Appliqués are fun and easy, and you really can create beautiful designs. This is a beginner design idea that will get you hooked on the applique process.

Create festive football towels for your tailgate party to last all season long …. maybe even to the big game!!