This is the beginning of my new project, the ‘Flowers for Elizabeth sweet bag’ from Inspirations magazine issue 51- I’m transferring the design to the fabric. With quite a detailed design like this, I use a light box. I’ve chosen Damask fabric rather than a plain surface fabric, for interest, but that does rather make the pictures hard to see here, sorry!
I’ve got barely enough of the Damask fabric to make this, so I have stitched strips of cotton sheeting up the sides to make the whole piece wider, so that it can be placed in my 12 inch hoop for stitching.
I traced the design from the Inspirations Issue 51 pattern sheet, then taped that to my light box, and placed the fabric on top.
I used a mechanical pencil to trace over the lines onto the fabric. I can get a very accurate design outline that way. Here’s the tracing, and the fabric.
The design instructions say to ‘design an initial for the reverse of the bag, using elements from the sweet bag front’. Well, to be honest, that’s a bit of a cop-out on the part of the magazine! It’s not a problem for me – I’m an embroidery designer by profession – but I think many readers of the magazine would struggle with this part! A basic alphabet is provided on the pullout sheet, but it’s up to you how you place the design elements. Anyway, I designed my ‘J’ to look like this!
I then transferred the design onto the fabric using the light box, as before. It goes quite a long way down on the fabric, rather than being placed centrally, to allow for the drawstring section at the top of the bag later.
Itching to get started on the stitching, now!
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Janet Granger's Blog 
Hi Janet,
You didn’t mention what lead you used in your mechanical pencil. I make patterns and use number 7 lead because I am so heavy handed that the number 5 lead just kept breaking. Is your lead HB or I should have said what is the hardness of your lead. Thanks
It’s a PaperMate Non-Stop one with an HB lead. I buy them in boxes of 12, as I don’t like to use any other sort of pencil, for anything!!
Doesn’t the pencil lead transfer onto light colored thread?
No, I’ve never had a problem with that. It’s important to only make a light line, just the once, and make sure it’s narrow enough to not show once the embroidery has been done.
Thanks for feedback. I’ll try next project. Admire your work. I did work the #40 silk gauze small pillow design for your Tree of Life a few months ago.
have a tough time with anything related to counted cross stitch. Always goof it up. I finished the mini pillow and framed it with fabric Made into a cover of a needle book I designed.
There is something rather exciting about seeing a design all ready to start stitching, and I love your scrolly ‘J’, I think that will embroider nicely. Now the fun begins … 😀
Thank you! Yes, I always love starting a new project, even though I haven’t got much patience with the preparation – I just want to get stitching 🙂