A woman who killed a friend during a drinking binge after he sketched a caricature depicting her as being overweight has lost her bid to overturn her 14-year jail term for murder.

Boronika Gam Hothnyang, 26, and her friend, William Awu, 26, had fled war-torn Sudan hoping for a better life in Australia before she stabbed him to death at her Dandenong public housing commission flat.

In a judgment handed down on Friday rejecting Hothnyang's application for leave to appeal her conviction, Court of Appeal Justices Geoffrey Nettle, Marcia Neave and Michael Sifris said Hothnyang had been on a "drunken orgy" when threatening to kill Mr Awu if he drew any more pictures of her on July 15, 2011.

The three judges said Hothnyang later tried to choke Mr Awu before "fetching a knife and stabbing the deceased to death as he sat unconscious in a chair".

In the lead-up to the stabbing, Hothnyang and Mr Awu had been drinking wine with seven other friends in the flat when Mr Awu had been given a pen and paper and asked to draw Hothnyang "like a barrel, big and fat".