A Fine Pen: Trying a New Iron-on Transfer pen

A few weeks ago I received a new Sublime Stitching invention: the Fine Tip Iron-on Transfer Pen.* Sounds pretty good doesn't it? Could this new pen resolve the issues I have with Iron-on pens? I think it does!

My main problem with iron-on pens (I used Sulky Pens in the past) is the thick lines they produce. You need a minimum of four strands to cover the design. Another issue is the uneven distribution of ink when tracing a design. I tried out the Sublime Stitching Fine Tip Pen with a small Squirrel design, which I traced without blobs or other unwanted side-effects onto tracing paper. The ink is permanent so make sure you trace the design carefully.

I followed the instructions on the package and pre-heated my fabric (a small scrap of lovely quality cotton satin) and then put the tracing paper on top, with the ink-side down. After pressing briefly with a hot iron (no more than 10 seconds) this is the result:

The lines of the transferred Squirrel are nice and even. Maybe not as thin as the original design but definitely thin enough to cover if you stitch with two strands or more. I'm fill stitching my Squirrel so the transfer works out fine for me. The ink transfers several times and you can always re-trace the design of course. For really detailed or delicate work I will still use a regular pencil to trace a design but I'm charmed by Sublime Stitching's Fine Tip Pen and think it's a great addition to my embroidery tool kit. The Fine Tip Pen is available in five different colours and costs $6.50 (or $25 for a set of five)

Oh and this is the Squirrel with a little bit of stitching done.

It's supposed to be a Turquoise Squirrel but he looks more Blue to me. Either way, the colour choice is very different from what I usually would choose to stitch a furry creature but I so enjoy stitching this!

*I received this pen without obligations to try it or write about it. As always all my opinions are my own. So if I like something, I really like it :) 

2B or not 2B or transferring patterns with a pencil

Regularly I get questions about how I transfer my embroidery patterns to fabric. For a long time I mostly answered it with 'a water soluble marker'. However recently I had noticed that some of my embroidery work had yellow-y stains. I wasn't sure what caused it until I read this blogpost on Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread blog. So while it isn't 100% proven that the blue water soluble markers caused the stains on my embroidery work I am definitely more cautious about using them.

I mentioned this on my Facebook page and Judith (a very talented stitcher, check her work here) suggested using a 2B pencil instead. Now the wonderful thing about the blue markers was that I could change a design halfway a project and wash away the lines (or so I thought) so I thought I'd do a little 2B experiment to convince myself this ordinary grey pencil could do the trick too.  I have also read that some people use a HB pencil for tracing which is a slightly 'harder' pencil. The higher the 'H' number a pencil has (9H for example) the lighter the mark. High 'B' numbers are soft pencils which give dark (black) marks. An HB pencil is right in the middle.

I traced the little envelope (it's from this pattern sheet) by sticking the pattern to the window, putting the fabric on top and tracing the pattern onto the fabric with the 2B pencil (photo on the left). After that I tried to wash it out by simple rinsing it with water (photo on the right). The traced image is not completely washed out but has faded a lot. After that (not pictured) I used some detergent for hand washing clothes (and water obviously) and the marks seemed even less visible after that.

So...all in all I'm not unhappy with the results. Tracing with a regular pencil has a lot of advantages. Pencils like these are always on hand and the transferred image has fine, delicate yet clearly visible lines. Certainly for designs that you are not planning on changing halfway this is a method of transferring worth trying out!

There's a few other things I wanted to share with you. I started a new (smaller) shading/furry stitching project. And yes I traced it onto the fabric with a 2B pencil as well!

More about this project later this week.

Recently I wrote about the fabulous Illustration Stitch A Long me and Bridgeen are hosting on Flickr soon (starting January 2013). You can grab the button if you are stitching a long with us or want to promote it on your blog.

P.S. Less than one day to enter for the Mostly Ms Marvelous Rabbit Sewing Pattern Giveway!

Another way to transfer an embroidery pattern...print and iron on

For the Embroidery Commons project (I wrote about it here) I needed to transfer some text to fabric. My assigned line is "In the same way". And because the term the Mr. X Stitch family  (of which I am temporarily part of for this project, like a distant Dutch cousin) is stitching, is 'Fractal', I thought it would be fun to embroider the same line four times. I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to Fractals but I do know they tend to repeat themselves a bit.  Mr. Bunny got the idea to add another layer of clever by using a simple pattern within the pattern by moving the colour forward one place with each subsequent line.

I thought I'd try to transfer the text to fabric by simply ironing on the text I printed on my laser printer. And I was not disappointed. Sure it's a bit vague but good enough for me to embroider the letters. I ironed it on right after printing and I'm not sure if it will transfer all that well if you wait a bit longer. Before printing the sheet I reversed the text in an image editing program so the text would appear in the right way on the fabric. I tend to use different transfer methods for different type of patterns and I think this way of transferring works well for simple patterns and/or patterns with bold lines. And if you like vague fuzzy lines...;)

Update: this may not work with every printer but it's worth a try, right?