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Reverse Applique

Reverse Applique

Reverse applique is a simple effect with stunning results – our favorite kind of embroidery design! It's similar to regular applique; the difference is that your applique accent fabric is behind your cutout, revealing instead your fun fabric choices through a small cut "window." Don’t fret – in many ways this kind of applique is even easier to do than regular applique.

The design featured in this tutorial is:


Pretty Ornaments (Reverse Applique)

Gather Materials:

To make reverse applique, you’ll need:


Roll of masking tape, small blue scissors, white and red thread spools, and three red fabric squares with snowflake patterns on a white surface with faint circle outlines.

First spray some medium weight cutaway stabilizer with temporary spray adhesive, and smooth it onto the back of your fabric.

Hand holding a folded corner of white fabric with a sewn square patch and visible edges with fraying threads, on a white surface.

Start Embroidering:

Hoop your fabric up tight in your hoop, and load up your design on your embroidery machine.

Empty embroidery hoop with white fabric stretched taut, placed on a white background with soft shadows. Hoop is rectangular with rounded corners.

Start your design sewing. First, it will stitch out the decorative areas that aren’t part of the applique -- in this case, the holly and flourishes that go with the hanging ornaments.

Close-up of a sewing machine stitching white fabric with a delicate embroidered design featuring red berries and white leaves.

While that’s sewing, use your printed dieline templates to cut out your applique shapes. These templates are a little bit larger than the applique hole we’re going to cut, so they give you plenty of room for error.


Once they’re cut out, set them aside until your design is ready.

Hand holding a paper square with a drawn circle being cut with scissors. Nearby are two other squares of fabric with circles and lines drawn on them.

After the decorative elements of your design are done sewing, your machine will stitch a dieline shape, like these three circles. These are where the applique will go.


When these shapes have finished stitching, carefully pull your hoop off your machine, but DON’T unhoop your design.

White fabric with white embroidered outline of three Christmas ornaments hanging from a bow and holly leaves with red embroidered berries on top.

Using your small sharp scissors or a craft knife, cut a small hole in the middle of one of the applique shapes, then use that hole to cut out the entire middle of the shape. You can go as close as 1/8 inch to the edge of the stitched dieline as you like.


Important! If your scissors or knife is not sharp enough, you might push your design out of your hoop instead of cutting through your fabric, so take care to do it gently with a sharp object!

Close-up of hands using scissors to cut fabric inside a stitched circle on white cloth, with an inset image showing a finished circular cutout.

Once you have your applique dielines cut out, flip your whole design over. Now this is where we add our fabric.


You can either carefully spray the outside edges of your applique fabric, or just place them over the holes and add tape to the edges to keep everything in place. Make sure the right side of your fabric is facing up, out of the hole!

Close-up of three red fabric shapes taped onto white fabric with gold embroidered bow and string designs above each shape, suggesting a crafting or applique project.

Flip your design back over to check that the fabric is completely covering each hole.


If you used tape, try to keep it far enough to the edges so it doesn’t get caught in the final tackdown.


Press down a bit on your applique pieces from the front, to make sure your tape or adhesive is keeping your fabric pieces in place for the next step.

Three red fabric Christmas ornaments with different patterns—snowflakes, plaid, and holly leaves—are reverse appliqued on white fabric, accented with embroidered white holly leaves and red berries.

With your fabric held in place underneath, put your design back on to your machine. Start your embroidery up again, and it will sew a final tackdown around each applique piece, securing them in place.

Close-up of sewing machine stitching three red fabric circles with white patterns onto white fabric, with embroidered white hanging strings and small red bows above each circle.

That’s it! Your applique is done and ready to shine on your next project.

Three red fabric circles with different patterns resembling Christmas ornaments are appliqued onto white fabric with gold embroidered stems, bows, and holly leaves.

With some careful snips through your fabric and a few of your favorite applique scraps, you’ve got a fun and simple technique with big results.

White pillow with three red patterned fabric circles appliqued, connected by cream colored stitched lines and bows with small red buttons, on red fabric background.