Now, the other two methods are ones that I have had limited success with but some people swear by them so I say, do what works.įirst you have to buy the right type of paper.
Free printable 14 count cross stitch graph paper free#
These will work if you are free hand drawing your pattern but obviously darker fabrics make it hard if not impossible to see the pattern under the fabric in order to trace it. There are also pens with white ink for darker fabrics. Wrights 8823005 Water Soluble Marking Pen, Blue You can pick them up at your local craft store too. Want to Buy Some Magic Pens? Good news: Amazon sells them! These are the ones I use but there are a few different brands. Sometimes if I’m feeling cocky I will just freehand draw right onto the fabric with the pen and hope for the best…Ĭlearly I was drinking herbal tea this particular morning. If you want to speed it up you can wet/wash the piece and the color disappears immediately. Then you are done! And after a few hours the purple lines just disappear…like magic. In this case, I used all backstitch and just a few french knots for the smaller dots but you can really treat this like a coloring book of stitches and go buck wild. Tah-Dah! Yours probably won’t look like a drunk 5 year old traced it the way mine does. I just hold it there and use my pen to trace the pattern. In those cases I head to my window.Īnd then you can REALLY see all the lines perfectly. Sometimes it’s not so easy and you need some help. In this case, it’s really easy to see the lines so I could just go ahead and use my disappearing ink marker to trace the pattern onto the fabric. Next, flip the hoop over and lay it on top of the pattern. The one seen here is just a basic oatmeal linen. This method works best if you use a light, semi-transparent fabric. Now, I take my fabric and stretch it in my hoop.
Then I use a fine point black sharpie and go over the drawing: Ok, I start by drawing it out in pencil on some drawing paper: (Shout out to CapriciousArts for inspiring another Dr Who piece…you guys have to check out her latest weeping angel piece because it’s awesome!) Today I’m letting my geek flag fly by drawing out the Gallifreyan sentence “Bow ties are cool” …this is a Dr Who thing for my non-Whovians out there. Or you can draw your own patterns like I usually do. Here is the #YearOfStitch Q1 pattern (by the talented Heather Muenstermann) if you want to practice your stitches! Print out or draw your own pattern on drawing paper This means when you are done stitching, if you haven’t covered up all of the pen marks you will need to wash your embroidery piece. There is a different type of pen that is water-soluble so it will stay put until you wash it. The one downside of the disappearing ink is that if you have to put the project on hold for any significant amount of time, you will have to retrace the parts you didn’t stitch because that shit magically disappears. I prefer the disappearing ink kind becauseĢ) It is magic because it just disappears after a few hours/days (depending on your fabric) and you don’t have to worry about it. I generally always just use a marking pen. I am going to start with my personal go-to method and then I’ll fill you in on the other techniques I have tried. The longer story is this: There are many many methods for doing this and you might have to try a few before you find one that works best for you. The short story is this: You want to get that pattern onto your fabric so you can stitch on top of it.
The technique you select can be driven by many factors: the size + scale of the piece, the type of fabric you are working with, the color of the fabric, personal preferences, etc. There are loads of ways to transfer patterns onto fabric.
Everything exists in squares and grids and as long as you find the center and count properly then your final piece will look just like the pattern.īut what happens when you start working with any of the other hundreds of embroidery stitches? Then the patterns become more complicated and require you to transfer the actual images from paper directly onto the fabric so you have a guide to stitch from. Most folks start by stitching cross stitch patterns because they are easy breezy to play with because you just count and stitch. I’ll make it highly comprehensive to make up for my tardiness! Now that you all are killing it with the #YearOfStitch some of you who are new to embroidery are wondering how the heck to use these new stitches. Hot damn it took me long enough to getting this out there.