Embroidery Basics: Transferring designs to fabric

This is part three of a six-part series on the basics of creative surface embroidery, for beginners and those looking to refresh their hand embroidery skills and knowledge.

Most surface embroidery is done by following a design or pattern, so the trick is knowing how to transfer a design to fabric so you can then fill in or embroider over the lines of the design with a needle and thread. There are a number of ways to do this – here are three easy ones:

Trace using a pen/cil

This is the easiest method, especially if you don’t have a lot of embroidery supplies. There are lots of options out there when it comes to pens and pencils: fabric markers from haberdasheries, water-soluble markers, Frixion erasable pens, ballpoint pens, pencils, chalk pencils… You’ll have to try a few to see what works best for you. Ultimately, as long as you can cover all the lines with embroidery, it’ll be okay!

I use a pencil, the old-school type that you have to sharpen. This way, I can keep the point really sharp to draw as fine a line as possible, one that will be easily covered with thread.

1. Print your design and tape it to a lightbox or a window.

2. Then tape your fabric over the printed design, positioning the design where you want it, and trace over it on to the fabric.

3. Double check that you’ve traced on all the design elements before removing the fabric from the lightbox or window.

Madi teVelde shows you how to transfer a design by taping it to a window:

Transfer using dressmakers’ carbon

Dressmakers’ carbon comes in different colours, so choose the colour that’ll show up best on your fabric. You should get a sheet of white carbon paper if you buy a pack, which works well for transferring designs on to dark fabric. It’s widely available from haberdasheries and is usually reasonably priced.

1. Print your design.

2. Lay your fabric flat on your work surface, place a sheet of dressmakers’ carbon face down on the fabric and your printed design on top of that.

3. Draw over the lines of the design to transfer them to the fabric.

4. Check that all the lines have transferred before lifting the printed design off the fabric.

Jenny Hart has put together a step-by-step photo tutorial using her Sublime Stitching carbon paper.

And Anne from Lolli and Grace uses an embroidery hoop when transferring designs with carbon paper, but her method is the same:

Create an iron-on transfer

Iron-on transfers allow you to transfer designs on to fabric using a hot iron. You get commercially printed transfers in some kits, but you can also make your own using various iron-on transfer pens and pencils from haberdasheries and specialist suppliers.

1. Reverse your printed design. You want a mirror image so it will appear the right way round on your fabric, especially if you have any text in your design.

2. Trace the design on to tracing paper with your iron-on transfer pen/cil.

3. Place the design face down on your fabric and press firmly with a dry iron. Slide your iron over the design, taking care not to shift the paper. It’ll only take a few seconds.

4. Lift a corner to check that the design has transferred to the fabric before removing it completely.

Jenny Hart has put together a step-by-step tutorial with photos, using her Sublime Stitching transfer pens. You can also watch how she does this 1 minute and 20 seconds into her video on transferring designs:

Other methods

• Jessica Long has created a handy flow chart to help you decide which transfer method is best depending on the project at hand.

• Dana Batho describes three ways to transfer designs to fabric, including using a commercial water-soluble stabiliser.

• Mary Corbet writes about a number of different ways to transfer designs, which she says is her most frequently asked question.

• And The Spruce Crafts has put together a list of seven transfer methods for you to try.

Well prepped projects tend to be easier to embroider and end up looking better. Embroidery Tips, Tricks & Techniques takes you through the project process, from planning to fabric preparation, design transfer and embroidery, with tips such as which grade of pencil lead washes out easiest and why a roll of washi tape is a good addition to your embroidery toolbox!

Read Part 4: How to start and end your stitching

Festive Tree + modern mini hoop ornaments

Imagine your entire Christmas tree decked with hand embroidered ornaments… I have five to get you started.

There’s this picture I have in my head of a Christmas tree filled entirely with decorations stitched by hand. They could be felt ornaments, temari balls, crocheted decorations or some amigurumi reindeer.

Last year, I experimented with Snowflake hoop decorations and some felt and metallic thread stars. This year, I’ve made modern mini hoop ornaments embellished with embroidery, metallic thread and glass beads – along with the actual tree, well an embroidered one anyway.

I’ve not used beads for a while, so it was fun to get back into the headspace of embroidering with them. If you’ve never added beads to your embroidery before, give it a try; they bring a whole new element to your work, adding texture and sparkle. And I’ve put together a post that shows you how to embroider with beads, with lots of links to other bead embroidery resources.

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Festive Tree features bold ornaments and some unusual stitches, which I’ve adapted to create five mini hoop ornaments. The tree design is embroidered in six-stranded thread only, with the ornaments featuring metallic thread and beadwork to add a bit of sparkle. You could, of course, switch the instructions around and add beads to your tree or keep your mini hoop ornaments elegantly simple with just thread.

The ornament designs fit Dandelyne’s 5.5cm/2.2” mini hoops and the PDF pattern for Festive Tree is available for instant download from Etsy and Craftsy.

How to embroider with beads

Beads add texture and sparkle to your embroidery and are easy to work with. They come in different shapes and sizes, but those most commonly used for embroidery are round seed beads. Mill Hill makes glass beads of various shapes and sizes that work well for embroidery.

How to stitch beads on to fabric

Royal School of Needlework graduate Sarah Homfray has a great video on how to apply seed beads using three different methods:

1. Attaching single beads individually so they can be dotted around the fabric (1.20 minutes in).

2. Couching down a row of beads in a straight line (4.50 minutes in).

3. Back stitching beads along a curved or wavy line to create a solid row of beads or a row with gaps between the beads (8.10 minutes in).

You can also back stitch, say, three beads at a time, going back three beads each time to reinforce the stitching as Pam Ash has done here. 

Robin Atkins has made her first book, One Bead at a Time, available as a free download. She gives four different ways to attach beads – with seed stitch, back stitch, lazy stitch and couching – on pages 48 to 51, with side-view illustrations so you can see how the thread runs through the beads and fabric. 

And Bead-Media.com goes into detail about starting and ending with knots – the good, the bad and the alternatives.

How to attach beads in a cluster

Use the same method as you would to attach single seed beads, but position them close together to create a cluster of beads. Start along the outline of your shape and work towards the centre, adding beads until your shape is filled. The trick is to position each bead at a different angle to the one alongside it.

If you want to match your DMC thread perfectly to your Mill Hill beads, use this chart.

Bead embroidery book

If you prefer learning from books, A-Z of Bead Embroidery by the Inspirations magazine team in Australia is a "comprehensive guide to bead embroidery … With over 440 step-by-step photographs, it brings bead embroidery within the reach of anyone who can thread a needle.” 

You can look inside the book on Amazon. 

Bead embroidery patterns

Festive Tree

The modern mini hoop ornaments in this pattern use different beading techniques to create 5 embroidered decorations for your Christmas tree.

Celtic Stems

The 12 flowers in this pattern incorporate embroidery, embroidered appliqué and beading.

Celtic Leaves

The eight leaves in this pattern each contain a combination of embroidery, embroidered appliqué and beading.

Embroidery Basics: Choosing fabric

This is part two of a six-part series on the basics of creative surface embroidery, for beginners and those looking to refresh their hand embroidery skills and knowledge.

The two types of fabric used for creative surface embroidery are your ground fabric – the fabric you embroider on – and backing fabric, which is optional.

Ground fabric

Natural fabrics work best for this style of embroidery, such as cotton, linen, hemp and blends of these. Linen and hemp can get expensive, but are lovely to embroider on and you might decide they’re worth the price for a special project. Cotton and cotton blends are more widely available and prices vary, but cotton can range from really good to not-so-good in quality.

These are the things to look for when shopping for fabric to embroider on:

• What’s it made of: Look for fabric made from natural materials.

• Look and feel: Is the fabric soft and pliable or stiff and shiny? Softer fabrics will be easier to embroider.

• Stretch: Hold the fabric in both hands and pull it in all directions to gauge how much stretch it has. The less stretch, the better.

• Weight: Imagine the fabric with embroidery on it. Is it substantial enough to “hold” the stitches but also not so thick that you’ll struggle to pull a needle and thread through it.

• Surface: Run your hand over the fabric. Is it nice and smooth?

• Weave: Look for fabric that has been tightly woven.

• Colour: Think about your thread colours and how they’ll show up against the fabric.

• Pattern: You can embroider on patterned fabric, but bear in mind that it’ll dilute the effect of your embroidery if it’s not part of the design.

Backing fabric

Backing fabric is basically just an extra layer of fabric behind your ground fabric that helps stabilise your stitching. Cotton voile is ideal as it’s made from natural fibres and is soft and lightweight. I always back my fabric but you don’t have to, especially if your ground fabric is fairly thick.

Cut a piece of voile the same size as your ground fabric and tack it by hand or stitch it by machine/overlocker/serger to the back of your ground fabric after you’ve transferred your embroidery design.

Mary Corbet of NeedlenThread.com goes into the details of backing fabric for different styles of embroidery here.

These are the basic things to consider when choosing fabric for a creative surface embroidery project. For more in-depth advice on what to look for when choosing your ground fabric and the ins and outs of backing fabric in detail – including how to prepare your fabric before you start embroidering on it – see Embroidery Tips, Tricks & Techniques.

Read Part 3: How to transfer embroidery designs to fabric

Embroidery Basics: Tools and supplies

This is part one of a six-part series on the basics of creative surface embroidery, for beginners and those looking to refresh their hand embroidery skills and knowledge.

Creative surface embroidery is the style of embroidery that you see on this site. It’s also sometimes called free style or free embroidery as it is not limited by the “grid” of the fabric (as it is in cross stitch, for example). In other words, it is worked freely across the surface of the fabric. There are many different surface embroidery stitches, which makes this style of embroidery fun and engaging to do, and you only need a few basic items to get started.

Needles

The two main types of needles used for this style of embroidery are embroidery and milliner needles.

Embroidery needles, sometimes called crewel needles, have an oval eye that can hold numerous strands of thread. They come in different sizes and your thread should pass easily through the eye when you’re threading the needle, but not so easily that it slips out while you’re stitching.

Milliner needles, sometimes called straw needles, are used for embroidering knots. They’re the same width from eye to tip so they pull easily through the wraps of thread that make up knots.

You can see the different needle sizes nice and clearly on this needle size guide.

Mary Corbet of NeedlenThread.com has written a lot about needles. And Sarah Homfray, a graduate of the UK’s Royal School of Needlework, shows you in detail how to thread a needle with different types of thread, including six-stranded cotton:

Thread

Six-stranded cotton is made up of six strands of thread twisted into one, which you can split up as needed (the embroidery instructions in my patterns tell you how many strands to use).

There are various brands of six-stranded cotton available. I use DMC as it is widely available, reasonably priced and comes in more than 500 colours – 489 until recently, when the company added 35 new colours.

The Spruce Crafts has links to several thread conversion charts here if you want to use a different brand to the one given in your pattern.

And Mary Corbet talks about six-stranded and other cotton embroidery threads in detail here.

Fabric

Fabric made from natural fibres works best for creative surface embroidery, such as cotton, linen, hemp or blends of these. Blends with a bit of polyester in them are okay, but try to buy the best quality fabric you can afford, especially if it’s for a special project.

For more on how to choose suitable fabric for embroidery and info on backing fabric, see part 2.

Scissors

You get scissors that are marketed as being specifically for embroidery, but any small pair with sharp blades and points will do. I invested in a pair of Kai 5100 4-inch needle craft scissors, which work beautifully.

Hoop

An embroidery hoop helps keep your fabric taut as you stitch, preventing your work from puckering. Use a smallish hoop and move it around on your fabric so you can work the stitches comfortably – this style of embroidery can take a bit of squashing.

Jenn Sturiale from Stitcharama.com shows you how to use a hoop:

These are the five basic things you’ll need to stitch a creative surface embroidery project. For more detailed info on the items above – and a bunch more tools, supplies, links and tips that make embroidery easier to do, such as thimbles, floss cards and why a screwdriver comes in handy – see Embroidery Tips, Tricks & Techniques.

Read Part 2: How to choose fabric for embroidery