Prick and pounce
This is an exquisite method for transferring your embroidery design onto smooth fabrics. It’ll not work on coarse fabrics or those with a pile, like velvet.
Although laborious, it produces an accurate outline and is right for finely detailed designs.
There are a couple of items that you simply will get to use this method.
- A cork mat, or pad of felt.
- Soft flannel fabric to form the roll
- fine paintbrush
- Paint, either watercolor or oil – blue or white counting on the material colour
- Start by making the roll or pad which you’ll use to push the pounce powder through the pricked holes within the pattern. Take a bit of sentimental fabric, about 10cm (4 inches) wide and long enough to roll up into a cylinder about 3cm (1.25 inches) in diameter.
Take the pin-vice or needle and begin pricking tiny holes along the outline of the planning. Keep the holes approximate, especially around curves. attempt to fit about 20 holes to every inch of outline. Take some time, you are doing not want to form any errors at this stage. Take frequent breaks to offer your arm, shoulder and neck a rest.
After pricking all the holes hold the pattern up to the sunshine in order that you’ll see the outline clearly. you’ll soon notice if you’ve missed anything.
Next place the fabric you would like to embroider on a tough surface with the proper side uppermost. Pin the pricking to the material firmly. you do not want it to manoeuvre partway through otherwise you would need to start over.
Carefully remove the pricking from the fabric. you do not want to smudge the powder outline! Pour any leftover powder back to the container to use once more.
Check your design on the material. Did it all appear during a fine dotted line? If significant areas are missing, then I’m afraid you’ll need to start over. Here, devour the material and shake it to get rid of the markings, then pin it down and check out again.
If your pattern is complete, it’s time to form the planning more permanently by carefully painting together with your fine paintbrush over the lines of the planning. Try using watercolor paint first, but if it doesn’t “take” on your particular fabric, you’ll need to resort to oils. Remember to thin the paint slightly with pure turpentine to urge a fine line.
Leave the paint to dry, then flick off any remaining powder, which can leave you together with your design transferred onto your fabric able to stitch.
A painstaking task, but well worthwhile if you would like an accurate pattern.
Tacking method – alternative to iron on transfers
If you’ve got less time to spare, you would possibly wish to try the tacking method as an alternative to iron-on transfers. Here you will need some tissue or paper and tacking thread.
This method isn’t as accurate as the pouncing technique, but it’s fine for easy outlines without an excessive amount of fine detail. it is also useful for textured fabrics which will not allow the other method to be used.
Do not tie a knot within the thread, but make a few back stitches within the same place to secure the start and end of every length.
Do an equivalent thing along curved lines. On straight lines, you’ll escape with longer stitches. Once you’ve got tacked all the lines, carefully remove the paper, leaving the planning showing in running stitches on the material. you’ll remove these stitches once you reach them as you are doing the embroidery.
Using a Light Box
An artist’s lightbox can prove useful when transferring designs onto fabric. Place the planning then the material on top of the sunshine box’s surface, and turn it on in order that the sunshine shines through from behind. This enables you to ascertain through most fabrics and you’ll then draw with chalk or a cloth pen.
Using a window
If you would like to embroider on fine, sheer fabric, then you’ll use a window as a makeshift lightbox.
Draw or print your pattern onto paper and use masking paper to connect it to a close-by window. Then put your fabric over the highest of the paper and again tape it in situ. employing a hard pencil, draw around the outline which can show through the material.
Modern methods of transferring patterns
Iron-on transfers are still available if a touch is difficult to seek out. Some modern-day magazines still include them, and you’ll order several books of iron-on transfers from Amazon using the links on this page.
However, we’ve additional ways of getting a pattern onto clothes nowadays.
Disappearing ink pens
There are two sorts of disappearing ink pens — water-soluble and people where the marks disappear by themselves over a brief period. There are even some pens on the market with two ends, one among each type.
If you only want to draw an easy shape on a bit of freestyle embroidery, these are great. If you catch on wrong, you recognize it’ll dissolve within 10-20 minutes or that you simply can use clean water to scrub it away. they’re also great for drawing parallel lines to act because the top and bottom of a row of stitches in order that all of them find themselves an equivalent size.
They are not the simplest idea for transferring an entire design onto a sophisticated piece of labour as they’ll disappear before you finish the work.
Conclusion
This is what you need to know about the different methods for iron-on transfers. If you have any questions about the topic or anything related to digitizing designs, feel free to reach out to us at Migdigitizing.
