Friday, June 12, 2015

Don't be koi...

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Anyway, I've had a lighter blue denim shirt for a couple of weeks, just waiting for me to finish the sunburst. I had already decided to use a very cool fish motif from Urban threads for the design.


Cool koi, no? Rather than using one of the transfer pens, I tried some carbon-paper-like stuff to transfer white lines to the denim. The transfer pens make such a bold permanent line, which takes extra strands to cover, and I didn't want either red or blue shadows in the embroidery (and I assumed the yellow pen would not show even on light blue). The stylus I used to transfer the design is actually a nail decorating tool for painting dots. It's a multi-tasking tool.


The design transferred really well.


All of the detail came through.


I have been very careful not to rub the fabric, but the lines do dissolve and fade after awhile (I think the particles just flake off, it's not actual fading). Here and there, I've had to redraw the outlines with a disappearing marker (it writes purple but disappears after a day or so). I plan to stitch all of the outlines in white (reversing the motif for the other side of the back yoke) and then I'll embellish with assorted blues, white, and maybe gray. I don't know if I'll do anything on the front yokes or not- I'll decide if it's necessary after the back is finished.


This is the transfer paper- I am very happy with how it worked. Theoretically, you can use the same sheet more than once, but this is a pretty intricate and solid design, so I'll use a new sheet for the other side (which I won't do until after I've stitched the entire right side back outline).


1 comment:

Ann Roberts said...

One of the ways I learned to transfer designs to cloth, during my crazy quilting phase......lay a piece of white tissue paper over your original design. Use a regular pencil and trace the design on to the tissue paper. Then place the tissue paper on to your base fabric and baste it into place. Then you can embroider right over the tissue paper. Once you have all your lines stitched on, you should be able to tear your tissue paper away. You may sometimes end up with just a bit of paper under your stitching, but over time it all falls out. Especially in an item you will wash. This is by far the best method I have ever found and it seems to me a good one for the work you are doing. Which by the way has my juices flowing