If you want to applique on fur using a sewing machine or you would like to machine embroider on long-piled plush fabrics, you need to take the long, shaggy pile into account. Here are some general tips and tricks:

• For the most visually beautiful result, none of the hair tips should be sewn into the appliqué (except for the ones completely covered by the applique fabric). You can no longer remove these from the embroidery or appliqué afterwards! To prevent this, use your hands to brush the hairs in all directions away from the center of the appliqué or embroidery before doing the appliqué or embroidery.
• When you make appliques with your sewing machine, it is impossible to transfer the exact position of the appliqué onto the right fabric side of the fur due to the many piles. So if you don’t want to rely solely on your eye, you will need a positioning aid. To do this, cut out the applique motif from the paper pattern piece. Then place the pattern pattern on your cut fabric and position the appliqué fabric piece in the hole of the paper pattern. Now carefully remove the paper pattern while holding the applique with your finger.
• When doing appliqués with long pile plush fabric, be sure to use a transparent, water-soluble embroidery film. In this way, the result is much cleaner, as the film presses the pile under so that no hairs can get into the seam.

How to applique on fur – step by step

With our patterns for cuddly toys it often happens that a short-pile plush piece is applied to a long-pile, larger piece of fabric using a double-sided iron-on adhesive webbing like Heat’n Bond. We’ll now show you how to do this using the example of our cuddly monster’s face, which has to be appliqued to his shaggy body.

Place the coated side of the Heat’n Bond on the print motif to be applied and transfer the contour to the Heat’n Bond. Roughly cut the Heat’n Bond piece, place it with the coated side on the wrong side of the appliqué fabric and press it.

When the fabric has cooled, you can cut out the piece along the transferred outline and peel off the backing paper.

Now brush the hairs in all directions away from the center of the appliqué position. Position the appliqué and, if necessary, pluck tangled fibers from the edge with a pin.

Press the appliqué in place at low temperature with light pressure for a few seconds. Always check the temperature on a piece of fabric first! The hairs could melt if the iron is too hot. Depending on the size of the appliqué, use pins to further secure the appliqué fabric. The longer the pile, the more the appliqué moves because at the moment it only sticks to the hairs!

If the shaggy plush you’re using is stretchy, glue a tear-away embroidery stabilizer to the wrong side of the fabric.

Place a piece of water-soluble embroidery film over the appliqué. Now you can sew around the edges of the appliqué fabric with a zigzag stitch or, if the appliqué fabric doesn’t fray, with a straight stitch. When using a zigzag stitch, choose a short stitch length and a bigger stitch width. It’s best to test the setting on a scrap of fabric beforehand.

Pull the upper threads to the wrong side of the fabric and knot them with the lower threads. Now you can remove the embroidery film and the stabilizer at the back.

Video tutorial

Watch this video from our Youtube Channel to see how we applique on fur fabric: