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How To Transfer Embroidery Patterns To Fabric

January 11, 2020 · Leave a Comment

How To Transfer Embroidery Patterns To Fabric

This post contains affiliate links.

***Are you looking for an embroidery project? The photos used in this post are from an embroidery project I’ve designed for us to do together! The text is a line from one of my favourite songs, Let The Bells Ring by Kate Rusby. It’s fitting for the start of a new year, but is good advice at any time! For more information about the project and to download the free pattern, click here.***

If you’ve made your own pattern to be embroidered, or if you’ve downloaded one from internetland, one of your first jobs will be to transfer the pattern to your fabric.

Over the years, I’ve discovered several different ways to transfer an embroidery design to fabric. Some of them are conventional, some of them are less so!

I’ll get to those in a minute, but a couple of tips first.

Tip 1is that the best method for transferring your pattern will depend on the fabric you’ve chosen, and on the level of detail and complexity of the pattern. It’s one of the reasons why having a few things up your sleeve is always useful! You can use what is best in the circumstances.

Tip 2 is to not worry about transferring all the lines onto the fabric. It’s to give yourself a guide when sewing.

With my current project, I traced the lettering, the flowers at the bottom, the circle of the garland and the leaves on the outside. I need to know where things are, and how big the letters are, but I don’t need all the little details. For example the buds on the garland are easy enough to copy. I didn’t need them drawn onto the fabric. And if it looks wrong, I can always unpick it!

how to transfer embroidery patterns to fabric

Tip 3 is to use either a washable fabric pen or a pencil. If you’re using a pencil, try to keep the lines light so that they won’t be visible when you’ve finished your sewing. A biro won’t do. It might sound obvious, but I don’t want anybody complaining that I didn’t say!

Trace It

The most obvious and the easiest way to transfer embroidery patterns to fabric!

This works best if the fabric you’re using is lightweight and is a pale colour. It also helps if the lines of the design are black or very dark grey so that you can see them through the fabric.

If your pattern is a digital one and the lines are not black, you could try printing it in black and white.

If this doesn’t work and the lines are still too faint, you might need to go over it with a black pen.

Trace It Using a Light Box

With thicker fabric, tracing might not work. If this is the case, you could use a light box.

A light box is basically a box made from opaque white plastic with a bulb inside. The light is diffused through the plastic, enabling enough light to pass through so that you can see the design through the fabric.

Alternatives To a Light Box

If you don’t have a light box and you don’t want to buy one, there are alternatives.

Alternative #1 A Window

All you have to do here is tape your design with the fabric over it to the window. It will work better if sunlight isn’t coming in directly through the window. A cloudy day is good for this, or a window away from direct sunlight.

Alternative #2 A Computer Screen or A Tablet

This is my favourite option if tracing doesn’t work.

A word of warning though: don’t press too hard or you’ll break the screen! Tablet screens are tougher than laptop screens, but please be careful!

Once you’ve turned the laptop/ tablet on, turn the brightness of the screen up and find something white to display on your screen. Opening a new document on Google Docs will do the trick.

Carefully stick your pattern with the fabric over it onto your screen.

If you can, stick it behind so that it’s on the outside of the laptop or tablet. If you can’t avoid sticking things to the screen, use washi tape or something else that’s not very sticky so it won’t damage the screen.

Use a soft pencil or a fabric pen to gently trace the design.

Print the Design Onto the Fabric

I have tried this several times and it is my least favourite method for transferring embroidery designs to fabric!

The main thing here is to make your fabric as much like a piece of card as possible, and to tape down all the edges so that any loose threads don’t get caught up inside the printer.

You can use freezer paper by ironing it onto the wrong side of the fabric, then taping down the edges, or you can stick it to a piece of card.

I have used washi tape to stick the edges down as it is easy to remove. The disadvantage with this is that it’s not very wide, so it’s difficult to get all of the edges stuck down and loose threads contained.

Once this is done, pop the fabric in the paper tray with the fabric face down. Then hit print.

I have found that this method sometimes works, but when it doesn’t fabric gets wasted because it gets ruined in the printer.

Also the amount of time it takes sticking it all down, untangling the threads from the printer’s insides and reprinting when it goes wrong means that it actually isn’t any quicker than the other methods.

Dressmakers’ Carbon Paper

Using dressmakers’ carbon paper usually works fairly well, but if you’re new to it, it might take a few goes until you get the hang of it.

It comes in a variety of colours. For light coloured fabric, I’ve found that the blue works best, although red works quite well too. I haven’t tried using it on dark coloured fabric. The official advice is to use a colour that’s close to the fabric colour, but I couldn’t see it!

To transfer the design, put the carbon paper over the fabric with the coloured side down. Pop the embroidery pattern on top, then trace over it with a pencil or a dried out biro.

You might have to press quite hard. It’s a good idea to try it out first on a scrap piece of fabric.

Tissue Paper

Using tissue paper is a traditional method used to transfer embroidery patterns to fabric. If you buy an embroidery pattern already printed, there’s a good chance it will be on tissue paper.

The way this works is that you pin the pattern to the fabric, then sew the design through the paper and the fabric. When you’ve finished, you pull the tissue paper away.

It has the advantage that no marks will be left on your fabric.

On the downside you might have to spend quite a lot of time pulling tiny bits of tissue paper out of your stitches with tweezers.

Stick n Stitch

I haven’t actually used this method, although it’s one I want to try!

Stick n Stitch is a water soluble stabiliser. To use it, print the design onto the fabric side (it will probably need to be fabric side down when you put it into the paper tray of your printer, but check first).

Stick the design to the fabric, then sew over it. When you’ve finished, cut away as much of the Stick n Stitch as you can, then wash it off. Lisa from Cucicucicoo explains how to do this with pictures here.

I’m not pretending to be an expert here, and there might be other ways to transfer embroidery patterns to fabric that I’ve not mentioned. If you have a favourite not listed here, then feel free to add it in the comments!

Don’t forget, if you want a project, you can download Just Take With You What Makes Your Heart Glad here.

You might also be interested to know that I have craft kits for sale on Etsy here, including some embroidery ones.

A New Year’s Embroidery Project

January 1, 2020 · Leave a Comment

New Year's Embroidery Project (With a Free Pattern!)

A New Year’s Embroidery Project

Who’s up for a little bit of a New Year’s embroidery project?

I’m in the process of writing several posts on the theme of handlettering for embroidery, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to have a project that we can do together.

I’ve been working on some handlettered designs for embroidery including this one.

The text is taken from one of my favourite songs, Let the Bells Ring by Kate Rusby. It refers to a Cornish tradition where everybody goes down to the sea to watch the sun rise on New Year’s Day.

A new year represents a new start, although I think it’s possible to have a new start whenever you like! It doesn’t even need to be a new day, never mind a new year, because it’s about our attitude.

Having said that, the end of a year and the beginning of a new one can be a good time for a kind of emotional stocktaking. It’s often worth having a look at what’s going on, what we need to leave behind us and what we can take with us forwards in our journey.

Without wanting to overshare, I do have some things I need to let go of. I think most of us probably do! It can be a hard thing to do sometimes, and focusing on the things that make our hearts glad is a step in the right direction.

So if you like the idea of an embroidery project to start off the new year, you can download the design for free at the end of the post. I will require an email address in exchange for it, and if you want to know why you can find out more here.

If you’ve never done this before, don’t worry! Everything will be covered as we get going. There’s a post that I’ve almost finished explaining how to embroider handlettering, and I’ll also explain how to transfer a design to fabric. There’ll be another post with suggestions for how to choose a colour scheme, although it’s fine to use the same colours I have if you don’t want to do your own.

So if you’d like the design, please enter your email address in the form below. Your information won’t be shared and I won’t send spam, but you will receive weekly (usually!) emails from me with updates, tips, freebies and links that I think you might like. You can unsubscribe from these at any time.

You might also like these tutorials:
“Joy” Christmas embroidery hoop project
Appliqued winter embroidery hoop

And if you like embroidery projects, you might like to take a look at the craft kits in my Etsy shop!

Book Review: Making a Life By Melanie Falik

December 10, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Book Review_ Making a Life by Melanie Falick

Book Review: Making a Life By Melanie Falik

I was sent a copy of this book to review. All the opinions expressed are my own.

About the Book

One of the things I love as much as making things is reading, so when I was offered a copy of a book about making things, of course I said yes!

And I’m glad I did because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

Making a Life is an interesting, beautiful and inspiring book.

It is not a “how to” kind of craft book or one of those aspirational “Look at my space” kind of books (thankfully because I don’t really like those!).

It’s about why people make stuff as well as what they’re making, how they got to where they are, why it matters and how it affects their outlook.

In some ways it’s similar to Jacob Nordby’s book, Blessed Are The Weird, which I read last summer. Both authors talk about the important role played by craftspeople in times gone by, and how and why things have changed and the impact this is having on us as human beings.

book review making a life melanie falick

The Journey

Melanie Falick begins by talking about her own journey and how the book came to be written. She’s previously written books about knitting, but wanted Making a Life to be a different kind of book.

She also refers to the journey she undertook to find out about different cultures via their making traditions. Travelling changes a person’s perspective, and learning about handcrafts and how they fit in to a different culture affects the way in which we see our own.

Like Jacob Nordby, Melanie Falick talks about the journey of how we’ve got to where we are here in the west.

In our earliest days, if nature didn’t provide exactly what was needed, then something had to be made. Craftspeople and makers of all kinds, had a vital role to play in the community and were held in high regard.

The author refers to the people who wove by hand the cloth that made the sails on Christopher Columbus’ boat, enabling him to sail to America.

Now the arts have been largely reduced to the status of an unnecessary hobby enjoyed by those with time on their hands.

This is reflected in the underfunding of the arts, both in schools and elsewhere, and also in the status and salaries of science related jobs. Science is valued; the arts are not.

Yet there is an increasing feeling among people who make things that maybe this is something we don’t want to lose. It’s part of out heritage and our history, and part of our humanity as well.

Some of these are the people in the book. They don’t just have creative jobs. They’ve figured out a way to live in a way that gives their lives authenticity and meaning.

making a life melanie falick book review

The Chapters

The rest of the book features interviews with 30 different makers, arranged into 5 chapters: Remembering, Slowing Down, Joining Hands, Making a Home and Finding a Voice.

Obviously there’s some overlap between them. Making something by hand involves slowing down, as anyone who has ever made anything by hand will attest!

The second chapter refers in particular to slow fashion, and adopting a slower pace not just because the making process demands it, but to allow for family life as well.

The third chapter, Joining Hands, talks specifically about makers who are creating communities. There’s the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, who through their quilts document African American history and cultural and social issues such as gun violence.

There’s also a shoe making collective in Brooklyn, New York, and an Englishwoman who runs crafting workshops at her castle in France.

But even the makers who are not directly building a community through their crafts, are still in a sense linking hands with the crafting community past and present. There’s a history and a set of skills, even if the makers use the same techniques to make something different. Annemarie O’Sullivan is a basket maker in the South of England. She makes baskets in the traditional way, but also uses some of these skills and techniques to make sculptures from willow.

Threads Running Through Making a Life

Several interesting threads run through the book and through the lives of the makers featured.

The first is that not many of these talented men and women were on a clear path to a creative life from their early childhood, but came to their craft later in life. There are several women featured who took craft classes as a way of getting a break when their children were tiny, and these turned out to be the first steps on their journey.

Having said that, the seeds of creativity were often sown while they were children. Sometimes it was a parent, a neighbour, a family friend or a favourite teacher. Often it was a grandparent.

We live in a society that downplays the useful role older people have to play in passing on skills and knowledge. Lots of us can relate to learning all kinds of things from older relatives.

It’s also interesting that the sweet elderly ladies of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland (the oldest member is 92) are not just sewing and chatting, but are politically involved through their quilting.

The second is the idea that making things and being creative is an intrinsic part of being a human being. It’s a thing we are designed to do, and to be. It gives our lives meaning.

Not being creative is to lose part of that that makes us human and somehow makes us less than what we could be. Ellen Dissanayane, the first interviewee in the book, says that the emptiness and dissatisfaction we often feel could be due to not satisfying a primitive need to create.

The third idea that runs through the book is that the creative process enables us to connect spiritually with the Divine, nature or the universe depending on what you call it. It is a way of connecting with the Something that is greater than ourselves.

What Now?

There was so much of this book that struck a chord. I’ve felt for a long time that there is something very wrong with the way that lots of us live our lives.

It’s making us ill. We’re stressed out, depressed and overweight, and dealing with the consequences of all of these. We’ve lost sight of who we are and what matters. We’re destroying the world around us.

There’s a lot to be said for slowing down and reengaging with nature, the seasons, our creativity and our humanity.

These people in Making a Life are lights in the wilderness. They have slowed down. They have time for their families. They are forging new kinds of community, where people and the environment are not exploited at the expense of others’ success and are able to be creative and live in a way that give their lives meaning.

I don’t know at the moment how that might look in my own life, but I’m planning on spending a good chunk of 2020 figuring it out.

The book is here on Amazon (affiliate link).

You might also like this post about how sewing enabled the survival of the human race.

Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

November 19, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

Welcome to the Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour blog hop!

It’s a lovely idea to make things for Christmas, but it can be difficult to find the time when everything’s so busy.

I used to have this perfect idea of how I wanted Christmas to be at my house with lots of things I’d made, and then feel annoyed with myself that I’d not managed to do even half the things I’d wanted to!

One solution to this is to start early. I even did this one year (it was the year of the dinosaur hats when I still only had 3 boys!), but I don’t like making Christmas things when Christmas is still some way off. Also I like autumn and I want to enjoy it as a season in its own right.

So the other option is to choose things that are quick to make and not too complicated.

If this is you too, you’ve come to the right place!

Here are 8 ideas for things you can make for Christmas that are both quick and easy. I’ve included the links below and I encourage you to pop over to these talented ladies’ blogs to have a look.

All the links will open in a new tab, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost in the internet jungle!

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

This one’s mine :).

It’s made from tulle and scraps of cotton fabric, and a 30 cm embroidery hoop. I wanted to make something that I could put up straight away and leave up for the rest of winter.

There are downloadable templates (in exchange for an email address) and you can find the instructions here.

Embroidered Snowflake Felt Ornaments

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

These lovely felt ornaments by Lisa from Cucicucicoo are made from scraps of felted jumpers and embroidered with white thread. There’s a link in the post to the embroidery pattern.

If you don’t have any jumpers that have suffered a mishap in the wash, or any that you have felted on purpose, you could always use ordinary felt instead.

The tutorial for the embroidered snowflake ornaments is here.

Fabric Christmas Tree Ornament

This tutorial from Domenica from Easy Sewing For Beginners shows how to make Christmas tree decorations from scraps of Christmas fabric.

She uses ricrac to decorate them, and there’s one with a star button at the top! Obviously you could something else if you don’t have ricrac. As you won’t need very much, it’s a good way to use up little bits of ribbon.

The post is here.

Christmas Pudding Decoration

If you’re not British and you don’t know what a Christmas pudding is, you’re missing out! It’s a delicious, very rich fruit pudding that usually needs to be steamed for several hours if you make it yourself in the traditional way, or warmed up in the microwave if you buy one from Marks and Spencer.

These decorations are made using scraps of fabric and a little embroidery hoop. Vicky suggests putting them on a card as a little extra thing for somebody to hang on their own tree.

There are templates for the applique, and the post can be found here.

DIY Christmas Coasters

These coasters by Damjana from Apple Green Cottage are made in an ingenious way.

You know how annoying it is trying to get all the edges neat when you’ve had to leave one open so that you could turn it the right way out?

These coasters are made in such a way that you don’t have to do this!

Damjana’s coasters are made from fabric that are Christmas colours but are not specifically Christmas prints, so they can be used at other times too.

You can find the tutorial here.

Fabric Ribbon Candy Ornaments

Staci from Crafty Staci has made these fabric ribbon ornaments. I’ve seen something similar before made from ribbon, but these are made in a different way using 2 strips of fabric in contrasting prints.

Staci has used lovely fabric in candy cane colours, but you could use whatever you have or what you would like to use to fit in with your Christmas colour scheme.

The tutorial is here.

Mini Gift Bag

It’s an uncomfortable truth about Christmas that it generates an awful lot of waste.

One way to cut down on stuff that ends up in landfill is to make beautiful handmade decorations like the ones in this blog hop! They’ll last and you won’t want to throw them away just because you’re bored of them.

Another way to reduce waste at Christmas is to wrap presents in something that can be reused.

Julie from Sum of Their Stories has written this tutorial for making little gift bags from Christmas fabric. She even suggests mixing Christmas prints with plain fabric to make them go further.

The instructions for making the bags are here.

Felt Christmas Tree Ornament

This Christmas tree decoration from Lulu and Celeste is a nice little project if you want something that can be sewn by hand.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a project that you can pick up and work on when you have a few minutes, then put it down and come back to it later. This is that kind of project!

There’s a downloadable template for the tree. The post is here.

I hope you feel inspired to make some easy Christmas decorations. Happy making!

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

November 13, 2019 · 17 Comments

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

It’s fun to make things for Christmas, but it can be difficult to find the time, especially when it’s such a busy time of year anyway.

I actually gave up trying to make a lot of things for Christmas a few years ago. I never managed to live up to my Pinterest fuelled expectations of having a perfectly decorated, tidy house full of calm, happy people, including myself!

Christmas is nice but not if you’re stressed. So now I focus on what is necessary, and do some other bits and pieces if I have time.

One obvious option when you’re busy is to make things that are straightforward and quick to make.

Another less obvious thing to do is to make things that aren’t too Christmassy. That way, you won’t feel too weird making it in October, hanging it up straight away and leaving it up until spring!

It also has the added bonus that it will help to reduce the horrible empty feeling in your house when you’ve put everything away.

This embroidery hoop Christmas decoration is one of these that you can get out when the weather turns cold and leave up until the clocks change back to summer time.

Tartan is cheerful at Christmas, but also in the autumn and the rest of the winter. And deer live in the woods all year round!

It’s easy to make and you might already have the fabric you need already.

To save time, the templates can be downloaded at the end of the post.

The deer was fiddly to cut out, but you could always use a precut deer instead, or cut your own if you have a die cutting machine.

How to Make an Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

You Will Need

A 30 cm embroidery hoop (Amazon have them here. This is an affiliate link)
Net or tulle in white or pale grey
Scraps of fabric. I used tartan for the deer and grey for everything else.
Ribbon

Instructions

Use the templates to cut out the pieces. You’ll need 1 hill and 1 deer. Mine has 7 trees, but you can use as many or as few as you like. The templates can be downloaded at the end of the post.

Cut a piece of your background fabric that’s larger than your hoop. The hoop I used was 30 cm in diameter and I cut a square about 45 cm x 45 cm.

Using the hoop as a guide, position the hill on the background and pin. Turn it upside down so that the tulle is on the top and use a zigzag stitch to sew the hill in place.

Now position the trees. It’s up to you where you put them, but bear in mind that it will look most effective if there’s some space between the trees for the light to come through.

Once you are happy with the arrangement and you’ve pinned them on, sew the trees onto the tulle with the trees underneath and the tulle upwards.

Sewing it this way means that you won’t catch all of the long edges of the trunks if you have some overlapping. So turn your work over and sew those long edges.

The next step is to pin the deer on and sew him in place. I used a straight stitch and I appliqued him on the right side up. The antlers are fiddly, so I sewed straight up past his ears and made a line of stitches up into each antler.

It might seem at this point a little bit bumpy and uneven. But how many times have you been in a wood and everything’s been perfect? As Bob Ross says, a wonky tree has a story and at least it won’t be cut down and made into a telegraph pole! Any imperfections here are what will give your embroidery hoop Christmas decoration rustic charm :).

Put your design into the embroidery hoop. Check that the metal screw is at the top. Gently pull at the edges so that the fabric is taut.

Trim the excess off so that you’re left with about 2 cm all the way round. With a needle and thread, sew a running stitch around the excess tulle, keeping close to the hoop. Pull it tight to gather it and tie off the ends.

You might need to trim it down a bit more, but like I’ve already said, the aim here is rustic and charming, not perfect!

Tie some twine to the metal part of the hoop and attach a bow. I had a bow already that I used from this wreath that I found in my cupboard of Christmas decorations!

Hang your embroidery hoop Christmas decoration up in a window and enjoy it until well into February!

If You Have More Time…

You could sew more trees over the deer so that he’s in the forest, not just standing in front of it.

You could embroider branches either by hand or with the sewing machine.

Using the sewing machine or by hand, you could add more stitches to the tree trunks to give them some texture.

If you have some white or gold embroidery thread, you could embroider some stars.

If You Have Less Time…

Cutting out the deer was fiddly and took some time, so another option would be to use a precut deer (a felt one would be fine), or if you have a die cutting machine, you might be able to make your own more quickly.

You could glue the farbic into the hoop instead of gathering it.

If you make one, I’d love to see it! You could email me a picture at teaandasewingmachine@gmail.com, or post it onto the Tea and a Sewing Machine Facebook page, or post it on Instagram and tag me (@annaatteaandasewingmachine) so that I’ll see it.

To Download the Templates

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How To Transfer Embroidery Patterns To Fabric

Trace It

Trace It Using a Light Box

Alternatives To a Light Box

Alternative #1 A Window

Alternative #2 A Computer Screen or A Tablet

Print the Design Onto the Fabric

Dressmakers’ Carbon Paper

Tissue Paper

Stick n Stitch

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A New Year’s Embroidery Project

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Book Review: Making a Life By Melanie Falik

About the Book

The Journey

The Chapters

Threads Running Through Making a Life

What Now?

Share this:

Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

Embroidered Snowflake Felt Ornaments

Fabric Christmas Tree Ornament

Christmas Pudding Decoration

DIY Christmas Coasters

Fabric Ribbon Candy Ornaments

Mini Gift Bag

Felt Christmas Tree Ornament

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Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

How to Make an Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

You Will Need

Instructions

If You Have More Time…

If You Have Less Time…

To Download the Templates

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