Removing Excess Stitch & Tear From an Applique

Video Transcript

"O.k. now that you have the front all snipped off nice; we need to deal with the back and this is kind of what that looks like. I'm going to go ahead and take the strings off; again being careful not to snip too close because you can take out a whole row of stitches. I like to get the stitches off before I rip off the stitch and tear just so nothing catches and pulls out where I don't want it to. This is called stitch and tear for exactly that reason, should be able to tear it just around where you've sewn. It's not an exact science; kind of depends on the brand you get too, how cleanly it rips away, JoAnne fabrics has got a little bit nicer than the Wal-Mart brand that I am using right now but when you have nothing else it'll work in a jiffy. Just kind of rip it around the outsides and it'll look something like this. Now if you put the applique on something where you're going to see the back of it like sometimes I'll put it on the flap pf the purse and on the inside you will see this pattern, I'll actually go in with my seam ripper and very carefully you don't want to leave, this doesn't look very nice on the back and the inside of the purse, so I very very carefully because you don't want to go through the wrong layers; kind of get a hole started and you can rip out the inside part also, and it'll still have the stitch and tear under the stitches and the stitch and tear still did its job because it held it all in place nice and tight while you were stitching it but you just kind of work it out like that. And that is how you make an applique."