Create an appliqué
Use an appliqué when part of a design should be a piece of fabric instead of thread: a felt patch on a tote, a big letter on a sweatshirt, a quilted block. It sews far fewer stitches than a fill of the same size, and the fabric shows its own texture. You draw the shape once, and Boldbobbin sews it as three layers with the machine stopping between them so you can lay the fabric and trim it.
New in v1.3.3.
A 70 mm felt circle under a satin border. Felt does not fray, so you cut it to shape beforehand.
- Draw a 70 mm circle with the Ellipse tool (L, hold Shift). It starts as a tatami fill.
- Set Fill to Appliqué. The fabric shows inside the border on the canvas.
- Under Fabric, set Color to your felt's color and Cutting to Pre-cut. The note at the top now reads "The machine stops once: Lay the cut patch on the guide run."
- Keep the defaults for the rest: a 2 mm Zigzag tack-down and a 3 mm Satin cover.
- Press Animate and play it: the animation pauses after the guide run and says what to do there.
- Export your machine file and, on the Review step, tick Appliqué cut shapes (SVG). Print the SVG at 100% and cut the felt to it.
- At the machine: the guide run sews and the machine stops. Lay the felt circle on the guide run and start again. The tack-down and the satin cover sew without stopping.
Make a shape an appliqué
- Select a closed shape with a Tatami fill.
- Set Fill to Appliqué, on the essentials bar or in the Properties panel.
The settings come in three parts, Fabric, Tack-down and Cover, in that order in Properties and as three buttons on the essentials bar (the Fabric button shows the fabric's color, and the cover's width sits on the bar itself). Pick Tatami again to turn it back into a plain fill.
How it is sewn
An appliqué is one object, in one thread, sewn as three layers:
- Guide run: a running line that shows where to lay the fabric.
- Tack-down: stitches that hold the fabric down.
- Cover: the border sewn over the fabric's raw edge.
Between them the machine stops so you can work on the fabric:
| Cutting | After the guide run | After the tack-down |
|---|---|---|
| Trim in place (default) | "Lay the fabric over the guide run." | "Trim the fabric close to the tack-down." |
| Pre-cut | "Lay the cut patch on the guide run." | No stop: the cover follows at once. |
A note at the top of the settings always says how often the machine will stop, for example "The machine stops 2 times: Lay the fabric over the guide run. Trim the fabric close to the tack-down." Nothing stops after the last layer. With the tack-down and the cover both set to None, only the guide run is sewn and the note reads "With only the guide run sewn, the machine does not stop."
A shape made of several separate pieces sews each piece this way in turn, with its own stops.
In the machine file, each stop is a pause on the same thread: the machine stops as it would for a color change, and you carry on with the same thread.
Settings
Fabric
| Setting | Default | Options or range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Color | A natural undyed-cotton beige | Any color | The fabric's color in the preview, drawn inside the border. It isn't stitched. |
| Cutting | Trim in place | Trim in place, Pre-cut | Trim in place: lay a piece bigger than the shape, and trim it in the hoop after the tack-down. Pre-cut: cut the patch to shape beforehand, so the machine doesn't stop to trim. |
| Guide run offset | 0 mm | −5 to 5 mm | Moves the guide run off the outline: negative inside, positive outside. |
Tack-down
| Setting | Default | Options or range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stitch | Zigzag | Zigzag, Run, E stitch, None | What holds the fabric down before the cover. A zigzag holds a trimmed edge best. |
| Width | 2 mm | 0.3 to 10 mm | How wide the tack-down's band is, centered on the outline. Zigzag and E stitch only. |
| Spacing | 2 mm | 0.3 to 10 mm | The distance between one zig and the next. On a Run tack-down this field is its Stitch length instead. |
Cover
| Setting | Default | Options or range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stitch | Satin | Satin, Zigzag, E stitch, None | The border sewn over the fabric's raw edge. |
| Width | 3 mm | 0.5 to 10 mm | How wide the border is. Make it wide enough to hide the fabric's edge and the tack-down. |
| Spacing | 0.4 mm | 0.1 to 5 mm | The distance between stitches along the border. Smaller is denser. |
| Offset | 0 mm | −5 to 5 mm | Moves the border off the outline: negative inside, positive outside. |
| Corner | Miter | None, Miter, Cap, Overlap, Round | How the tack-down and the cover turn a sharp corner, as a satin outline does. None just turns, which can throw long stitches at a sharp point. See Corner methods. |
Corner shows whenever the tack-down is a band (Zigzag or E stitch) or there is a cover.
For example, for a woven cotton that frays, keep Trim in place and the Zigzag tack-down, and raise the cover's Width to 4 mm so it covers the trimmed edge with room to spare.
See it before you sew
- Every view shows the fabric. In the Vector view the fabric fills the shape and the cover is drawn as a band at its width, in the thread color, so it reads as the border it will be. In the Stitch and Realistic views the fabric sits under the stitches. See Render modes.
- The animation pauses at each stop. Play the stitch-out animation and it stops where the machine will, saying what to do there, for example "Machine stop. Lay the fabric over the guide run. Then press play." The timeline marks every stop with a pause icon (Machine stop).
Where it starts and ends
An appliqué starts at its Entry point and, as of v1.3.3, ends at its Exit point, like any fill: the last layer is the one that ends there. Put the exit on the side nearest the next object for a short travel. See Entry and exit.
Cut file
When a design has an appliqué, the export wizard's Review step offers Appliqué cut shapes (SVG): the fabric to cut for each appliqué, as an SVG.
- Full size. 1 mm in the file is 1 mm of fabric. Print it at 100%, or send it to a cutting machine.
- Numbered in sewing order. One piece per appliqué (one per separate piece of a shape), laid out side by side, each turned and scaled as its object is in the design.
- Sized to tuck under the cover. Each piece is a little bigger than the outline, so a patch cut to it sits under the border.
- Mirror the cut shapes. A second option, shown once the first is ticked, for fusible web: trace the shapes on its paper side, and the fabric comes out the right way round.
The SVG comes in the same .zip as your machine file. See
Export an embroidery file.
On the run sheet
The run sheet PDF lists the layers as numbered steps in the order the machine sews them, and an Appliqué stops list says what to do at each stop, for example "Stop 2: Lay the fabric over the guide run." and "Stop 3: Trim the fabric close to the tack-down." Each step gets its own tile on the color pages, with what to do written under its number.
Pro
Appliqué is a decorative stitch: you can design with it and preview it on any plan, and exporting or publishing a design that uses it needs Pro. On a plan that can't export it, the Fill picker marks it "(Pro)".