Embroidery can add attractive embellishments to any cloth item, including accessories, curtains, and jeans. If you would like to get started with embroidery, there are a few things you should know about hand-stitch embroidery patterns first. There are at least three ways to create these patterns, and they are all relatively easy.
Ready-Drawn Iron-On Transfers
Embroidery transfers use blue embroidery pencil drawings. You have to choose a transfer from the book or packet of transfers you have purchased, lay your fabric item flat on an ironing board, and then flip the pattern blue-pencil-side-down onto the fabric. Keep in mind that this reverses the appearance of the drawing before you set a hot iron to the back of the transfer.
Use an iron hot enough to transfer the blue pencil drawing to cloth, but not so hot that you burn the transfer paper or the cloth to which you are transferring the pattern. A low cotton or silk setting should do. After a couple of passes of the iron over the transfer, check the transfer by lifting a corner to make sure the drawing has mostly transferred to the cloth. Now you are ready to embroider the design.
Draw Your Own Transfers
If you are really creative and a very good artist, you can buy embroidery transfer paper and a blue embroidery pencil and draw your own. Again, keep in mind that anything you draw will be flipped into a mirror-reverse image. Be especially mindful of letters and words! Then you can use the iron to transfer your unique drawing designs to whatever you want to embroider.
Use the Embroidery Feature on an Expensive Sewing Machine
Sure, you could just use the machine to fill in the embroidery too, but there is not as much fun in that. Still, you can program the sewing machine to create the outlines of the embroidery pattern you want to do. Then you can take the item to be embroidered off of the sewing machine and fill the pattern in by hand. The only downside to doing patterns this way is that you are limited to whatever preset patterns are loaded into this type of sewing machine. Not much in the way of originality is possible, although you can still be a little creative about positioning patterns on your cloth item. If you do not have this type of sewing machine and you do not want to spend the money to purchase one, stick with one of the above pattern options.
For more information about hand-stitch embroidery patterns, check out companies like Colonial Patterns.
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