Applique Beach Towel

This is my finished beach towel. It’s folded up so it might be hard to see, but the letters of the name go across the top of the towel. I started this maybe two years ago but never got around to finishing it because I didn’t want to cut out the fusible webbing. Turns out it wasn’t as hard as I had thought it would be.

So, when I picked it back up tonight, I had already cut out the letters, and that was it. I didn’t use a stencil or anything, I just used chalk and free hand wrote out the name, then cut it out.

Before I started I ironed out my letters, they are cotton by the way. I liked the colours because the light green in the letters matched the green of the towel. Next, I laid out the letters on the towel to make sure they were actually going to fit and so I would know where to stick each one with the webbing.

You can see here I used a tiny knife to cut out the interfacing. I just traced out the letters, so easy. I seriously can’t believe this is what took me so long to do this.

I tried to waste as little webbing as possible. I did this by keeping each letter close to the edges to the webbing. I had to throw out very little and have lots left for the next time I need it.

All ironed on, but after the letter C my iron was full of the gluey stuff. Also, I had no idea how long to iron it for. So I tried between 3 and 5 seconds. It worked but some letters started to fall off later and I had to re-iron them. 

There’s a lot more than you can see in the picture though, my letters were literally sticking to the iron. So I had to stop and clean it.

This is not my first time having this happen though. Turns out you can just clean it off with a dryer sheet. Once I wiped all the glue off, and the dryer sheet residue, the iron was as good as new. I finished sticking the rest on then was ready to set up my machine.

I had apparently also bought matching thread when I first started this project. You should note however, that if you have a long name you’ll want more than one spool .Notice also that I have matched my thread to the fabric by unraveling a little bit first and matched that part. This is more accurate than matching the whole spool.

Machine set up. Zig zag stitch at its widest and a narrow stitch length. I used between 0 and 1.

Finally ready to start sewing. I put the center of the foot right between the applique and the towel.

At the corners and curves I made sure to pivot with my needle on the outside of the corner or curve as you can see above. This will keep you from getting spaces in your stitches.

P all finished. At the C I had to stop and iron on the remaining letters as they had started to fall off from all the moving and turning of the towel that I had to do. After the P I had just 8 letters to go. I ran out of thread at the second L but luckily had a very very close substitute. 

Finished towel! Thanks for reading.