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An Easy Way To Duplicate Applique Patterns
By Serena Nabeta | October 2, 2006
I always try to keep a pile of handwork nearby that I can work on if I have little bits of time here and there. I can easily pick it up and put it back down to take advantage of small bits of “useless” time. You will be surprised at what you can accomplish in little 5-10 minute time periods.
I’ve finished the odds and ins of my handwork pile and needed another project. So I decided to stitch some hand appliqué designs onto some blocks that I can use in a quilt or wall hanging later. I saw this little quilt in a Sew Simple Appliqué book. I absolutely loved the fireflies and colors used.
I pressed and starched some white batik fabric and cut it into 8″ blocks. The 8″ is large enough that I can trim it down to whatever size I need later. I wanted to enlarge the firefly a little and use Heat’n'Bond to fuse on the appliqué pieces. What’s an easy way to do that? That’s what I needed to find out!
I started to trace each firefly on the paper side of the Heat’n'Bond and the cut it out slightly larger. After one, I knew there had to be an easier method. I scanned in the firefly pattern and saved it as a picture file (.jpg, .bmp, .gif). In WordPerfect (Microsoft Word or many other programs would also work) I inserted the firefly, enlarged it, copied and pasted it so I could get two fireflies on a 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper.
I cut multiple sheets of Heat’n'Bond down to 8 1/2″ x 11″. Heat’n'Bond tends to roll or curl, so I laid the sheets under my cutting mat to flatten them for a couple hours. I put them in the printer and printed the fireflies on the paper side. I could easily cut apart the fireflies, fuse their bodies to the green fabric and fuse the wings to the lavender fabric.
After trimming off the extra fabric, I fused them on my 8″ blocks. There are ready to stitch! Putting the sheets through the printer works wonderfully!! It wastes a little bit more of the Heat’n'Bond than just tracing the patters, but saves so much time! 
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