Pouncing with the Blues

Pouncing with the Blues: Everything is out and ready to transfer the Ecclesiastical Embroidery patterns for the trial run. Yesterday, I presented the new transfer products that I purchased while traveling over the summer. Today is the day. It is time to test them out and see how they work on white fabrics.  The goal is to have something that will show up with a clean, crisp line that is visible when stitching, but….. this is the big part.  It must not leave residue on the white floss and must be able to wash out.  So here we go!

Preparing for Design Transfer

The markers and pencils are out, along with the pouncer.  The pencil furthest to the right is General’s pastel chalk in light grey. Next is a Stabilo in yellow, and finally a Bic Paper Mate Flair.  With these, I will trace the lines of the design after pouncing with the blue quilt pounce.

The quilt pounce is light. It blows away easily and should work well.

The pouncer is loaded with blue quilt pounce.

The blue quilt pounce is rubbed and pounced over the entire surface of the design. Pouncing is better than rubbing, as it gives a cleaner, more crisp design when finished.

A quick peek to check and see if all is well and the entire design transferred, and it looks really good!

Here is where I made a mistake.  I blew ever so lightly on the design and the pounce powder, and guess what? Much of it blew away! The good news is that there was still enough left to see the embroidery design. It is not as clear as I would prefer, but lesson learned. DO NOT BLOW ON POUNCE POWDER. OK. So what is the next step? Tracing.

Tracing with Chalk

Here is the embroidery design traced with the General’s pastel chalk.

And here is the entire embroidery design traced with the General’s pastel chalk.  A few things might make this work better. First, the pencil needs to be super sharp – stop and sharpen along the way, often.  If the pencil dulls at all, the line gets thicker. It is not bad, but a drawback nonetheless. The other conclusion to make after using the pencil is that it works all right for simple designs. It will not work well at all for an embroidery design with a great amount of detail.  Another concern with this is will the marks remain visible enough during the time required to stitch the embroidery pattern.  That is definitely something to think about.

Testing Design Transfer and Washability

This is the embroidery design traced with the Paper Mate Flair in a darker blue color.  I have to admit, I did not take a great deal of time or care when tracing. The fabric being used for testing is a flour sack dish towel. I did not have this in a hoop, either, as the design was traced. Most of my projects are stretched taut in a frame at the point when the embroidery design is being traced.  I think this pen might give a fine line if it were redone and a little more care was taken.  The ink tends to get a little splotchy and heavy in places, with care that might also be better.  The line, for the most part, would work all right for hand embroidery. But will it transfer blue to the white embroidery floss, and will it wash out?

Finally, one last picture. The yellow Stabilo was used to mark a line inside the embroidery design. Then, at the edge of the embroidery design, a swirl was drawn with the lighter, more turquoise color of the Paper Mate Flair pen to see if there were any differences between the two colors when washing out.

So that is it for now. Next step: test stitching and see how that works.  Please be sure to leave a comment about your experiences with whitework embroidery design transfers.

Solo Dei Gloria

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