appliqué

Appliqué comes from the French past participle of appliquer (to apply), from Latin applicāre (to fold toward, to attach). The word entered English in the mid-eighteenth century as a textile term: one piece of fabric cut into a shape and sewn onto a larger piece of fabric. The technique is distinct from embroidery (which uses thread) and from patchwork (which joins pieces edge-to-edge). Appliqué places one surface on top of another. The layering is visible. The decoration announces that it was added.

The technique is old and global. Egyptian tent-makers used appliqué for pavilion decorations. West African cloth traditions — Dahomey (now Benin) appliqué, in particular — created narrative scenes by sewing cut fabric shapes onto plain backgrounds. The Fon people of Dahomey produced court banners using appliqué to depict kings, battles, and proverbs. European quilting traditions used appliqué for decorative bedspreads. The word is French. The practice belongs to everyone.

In the nineteenth-century American South, appliqué quilts became a major folk art form. The Baltimore Album Quilt, a style that originated in Baltimore, Maryland, around 1840, features elaborate appliquéd blocks of flowers, buildings, and patriotic symbols. These quilts were luxury objects — the fabric was expensive, the work was time-consuming, and the results were displayed, not slept under. The appliqué quilt was a canvas. The bed was a gallery.

Machine appliqué, using zigzag sewing machines, appeared in the early twentieth century and democratized the technique. What had required hours of hand sewing could be done in minutes. The word appliqué now covers both the laborious hand technique and the quick machine version. The French word for 'applied' applies equally to both.