Selecting the embroidery design:
Deciding on your design is one of the most crucial stages of doing embroidery. There are lots of things that need to be considered to ensure a good quality work that will last. Embroidery designs vary in many ways - from colour and size, to difficulty of sewing. Thus, choosing a design need to be given ample time and some common sense.
The first thing you need to consider is the size of your design and how it will render on the apparel afterwards. Although some designs can be resized in the actual sewing, there are those that should be done as prescribed. Some large embroidery designs have important details that would be obscured, if not totally eliminated if made smaller. Also, make sure that the size of the design fits the outcome you want, neither too big, nor too small.
Black and white embroidery designs can go with any other colours of a garment. However, when it comes to other colours, make sure that it will render good and will complement or contrast the garment in a good way. No matter how beautiful the design is, if the colours don't go well with that of the apparel, it will still look ugly. The same goes for designs with variety of colours and colour combinations.
Fore aesthetic consideration, concept must be carefully chosen. Make sure it goes well with the apparel's design and cut or it will turn into a disaster. Add your personal touch to the concept as an expression of your personality or of someone you want to give the garment as a gift. The embroidery design must fulfil its purpose, for example, we use a cartoon on a children's garment.
Assess your embroidery skills first before choosing any complex designs that require a lot of stitching techniques. It is also better to have a time frame or you may not just be bale to finish it. Taking on complex designs without confidence in your skills may just ruin the whole thing. If you are still new to the craft take on easier designs and take it from there.
Select the design according to the texture of the fabric, e.g. light embroidery will be suitable for delicate fabrics like chiffon and heavy embroideries will be more appropriate for thicker fabrics like cotton. The design varies also with occasion. Heavily embroidered garments are appropriate for a wedding but will definitely look out of place in office.
Know your end-user or wearer well. The sex of the wearer also influences the selection of the design. A design for a woman's garment will not look appropriate on a man's garment. Select the design keeping the age of the wearer in mind. Certainly what looks appealing on a teenager's dress may not loo nice on grandmother's outfit.
Enlargement and Reduction of a given design:
Sometimes, a design may have to be enlarged or reduced. e.g. What will you do if you have to decorate a diwan cover and a cushion cover with the same motif? Let us say that the motif used is a flower. If you select a large flower, it will look too big on the cushion cover. So what can you do? You can use a large flower on the diwan cover and the sample flower can be reduced to a smaller size for the cushion cover. In this way, the design size can be made appropriate to the article size.
The idea behind enlarging and reducing a design is to be able to use one motif on different sizes and shapes of articles. It sounds very simple but what do you do when you have a complicated design? Then you need a method to enlarge or reduce it, as below:
- Find a design that you would like to use in your embroidery.
- Trace it in a tracing paper.
- Use a carbon paper to transfer the tracing on to a graph paper or square lined paper or alternatively draw a square around it and divide it into even sized squares (as in image).
- Using the squares as a guide, draw the illustrations on to large squares for enlarging the design and small squares for reducing the design. (ref image)
This must be done carefully. It is only by following the position of the outline on the squares that the drawing stays in proportion; i.e. each part is increased / decreased by the same amount in width and height.
Methods of transferring a design
1. Use light
If your fabric is fairly thin, you can transfer the designs directly onto the fabric using a light source such as a light box or window, marking the lines with a chalk-based marking pencil or water soluble transfer pen or pencil.
2. Transfer paper
Designs can be transferred to thicker fabrics using carbon or waxed based transfer paper, often referred to as dressmakers'carbon paper. This light-weight transfer paper is coated on one side with a powdery, coloured ink and is made specifically for use on fabrics and will wash out of the finished piece.
To transfer a design using transfer paper, lay the fabric face-up on a hard surface, such as a kitchen counter. Centre the transfer paper over the fabric having the waxy ink towards the fabric, and place the pattern on top of the transfer paper. Transfer the design to the fabric using a stylus or empty ball=point marking pen. Be sure to press hard enough with the stylus to transfer the design to the fabric through the layers of paper.
3. Heat transfer pencils
Heat transfer pencils or pens are also an option for marking an embroidery design on fabric and will work on both light and heavier-weight fabrics. Transfer pencils and pens are available in red or blue and the ink is activated by the heat of an iron. However, these pencils are permanent. The markings will not wash out, and the marked lines must be completely covered with embroidery so they are not visible.To use a heat transfer pencil, trace the design in reverse on a light-weight sheet of paper (the design is traced in reversed because the pressing process creates a mirror image of the design marked on the paper). The easiest and quickest way to do this is to print your pattern, turn it over, and then trace the design on the back side of the paper using the heat transfer pencil. Be sure to use a very sharp pencil while tracing. The pattern lines transferred to the fabric should be as thin as possible so that they do not peek out from under your beautiful embroidery.
To transfer the design to fabric, place the paper against the fabric and press with a hot iron, lifting the iron off the paper before moving it to the next position. DO not iron by moving your iron back-and-forth along the paper, as this distorts the image.
4. Hot iron transfers
These are purchased ready-to-use and feature a wide range of subjects. They are normally printed in blue or grey ink. The designs are transferred to the fabric using a hot iron in the same manner as patterns traced using transfer pens and pencils.5. Pouncing
Before the advent of transfer paper and iron-on inks, pouncing was a common way to transfer embroidery designs to fabric.
Using this method, a paper pattern is pricked with a pin at regular intervals.
The pattern is then secured to the fabric and a powdered pigment is worked through the holes in a pouncing motion using a soft fabric pad.
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| Pouncing step 1 |
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| Pouncing step 2 |
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| Pouncing final |
6. Tracing paper method
To make the paper transfer, trace the design from the pattern directly onto the tracing paper.
Then cut the design from the tracing paper about an inch from the edges.
Next, baste the tracing pattern transfer to the embroidery fabric. You can use regular sewing thread or a single strand of the embroidery floss to temporarily attach the pattern to the fabric.
Embroider the design directly through the tracing paper transfer and the fabric, following the pattern markings. The example show using back stitch to outline the design, but tightly-worked stem stitch, closely-spaced running stitch can also be used.
Remember that this is a method for marking the fabric with an outline as shown with this turtle design, rather than a way to embroider a project. Keep the stitching simple as you trace the pattern with thread for best results.
Remove the tracing paper, being careful not to tug the embroidery stitches. It's easiest to remove the paper in small bits rather than trying to remove the larger sections. Any stubborn bits of paper that remain under the stitching can be removed with tweezers.
The finished tracing can be used as-is as a very simple embroidery, or fill the complete outline with additional embroidery stitches.
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