How to Hide a Hole (with an Appliqué)

A while back, Sophie entered an “I only want to wear dresses” stage so I went to a local thrift store to stock up. Found some great deals, including an adorable rainbow plaid dress. But I didn’t notice the HOLE until she was wearing it for the first time.
So what do you do? You slap on a big appliqué right over the hole.

Before and After

I did take pictures along the way, so here are my steps…

1.	I drew a flower shape on some fusible web and cut it out. Then I should have first fused the web onto some fabric and then cut out the fabric, staying about 1/4” away from the edge of the fusible web where possible. But no. Instead I cut out the fabric first while merely holding the fusible web against it, which is why—in the photo—the white flower and yellow flower don’t fit right at the corners…)
2.	I fused the flower onto the dress, over the hole of course. Then I drew a line as a guide for my stitching, using a colored pencil because it was handy and happened to be the same color as my thread. I tried to draw where the edge of the fusible web was, as best as I could tell through the fabric.
3.	I stitched on the line I just drew… or at least, I tried to! (I thought it would be easier and faster to lower my feed dogs and stitch it freehand. Not so easy. Not so fast. And definitely not so pretty. Maybe a darning foot would have helped. And some experience stitching freehand! Good thing I’m an experienced ripper-outer…)
4.	I stitched over the line a second time, to make the stitching stand out more. I took my time around the curves, sometimes stopping with the needle in the down position so I could lift the presser foot, turn the fabric, then lower foot and keep sewing. Using a small stitch length also helped me sew smooth curves.
5.	I repeated step 1 for a small circle fused onto a red scrap of fabric. Note: in this case, I liked the color but not the pattern of my red scrap, so I ironed the fusible web onto the manufacturer’s “right” side of the fabric so the “wrong” side would be face-up. I’m allowed to do that…
6.	After I fused the circle onto the flower (see my iron outline?), I drew another line to be my stitching guide again.
7.	I sewed around the teensy circle twice, but my lines were so messy and looked more liked square-cles than circles, so I sewed around a few more times.

And that’s it. Here’s what it looked like after I roughed it up a bit; it’ll fray even more after being washed and dried a few times.      
On to the rest of the mending pile… Too bad darning tights isn’t this much fun!

Edited 3/30: Wow, what a fun surprise this morning, to find a WhipUp.net post linking to here...