I'm feverishly trying to get caught up before I start Issue 5 sewing. My Parlan is on it's way to the US from Australia, can't wait to get it in my hands! I haven't traced the embroidery design yet because I just don't know which pen to use. I have read about a lot of different kinds of pens - what do you use? I don't think the disappearing one would be a good choice because I don't know how long it will be from the time I trace to the time I sit down to stitch. I'm a seasoned quilter but the embroidery is new (again) to me. I appreciate any help!
One photo to share - I was sewing up lots of 1/2 square triangles last night. I piled them up and sewed away. I got up to grab another stack that was behind me and peeked at the pile on the other side of the machine. I discovered that they had pretty much perfectly stacked themselves up. I didn't do that - they just landed that way.
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ReplyDeleteAnd this time without typos...I use a sewline fabric pencil: it's a softer lead in a mechanical pencil (you can also get blue, white and yellow colours). It doesn't fade, but I would stick to my drawn lines and make sure the thread covered them, as I'm not sure how it washes. The pencil comes with a rubber. The rubber doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteI use a Millennium pen - 03 in a pure Brown. It is non-bleeding and it has a very small tip so your stitching covers it right over it
ReplyDeleteI use a pigma pen which is permanent and prefer a .01 pen as it is very fine so you can cover the lines with thread. The only downside is that you have to be more careful when tracing as all the lines need to be covered and can't be erased.
ReplyDeleteI have used the sewline fabric pencil, and found that when stitching and handling the fabric it can fade especially if it is a busy pattern and requires a lot of stitching so you tend to have to keep refreshing the lines. I have also used a pigma pen and found the brown .01 to be the best to cover with stitching. The .03 can be a little harder to cover. A friend of mine used a disappearing pen and didn't return to her work for quite awhile and found that her 6 hours of tracing did disappear. Good luck, I have yet to star mine but have everything ready to go, I must admit that I have asked myself the same question, and on answering yours I now have my answer
ReplyDeleteyeah.....I'm using the sewline with green lead and I find that by the time I get to the end of the piece, my lines have pretty much completely disappeared - sometimes I have to go back and fill in areas to complete the piece. It might be that if I pressed harder and made darker lines that I wouldn't have that problem - that's what I'm going to try for block 4.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to use a pigma pen but since I trace on the window - rather than with a light box - I think it would be hard to get it perfectly traced.
I had that trouble with using a pen. First thing I traced I accidently drew a line that I thought I saw through the fabric, that wasn't there and then my piece of fabric was ruined with no way to take that permanent line out! :(
ReplyDeleteSweet looking fabric by the way!
ReplyDeleteYou might want to look into Transfer-Eze Embroidery Magic. You trace the pattern onto this product, then place it on top of the fabric and stitch. It washes off with a gentle hand washing. Bird Brain Designs highly recommends it and has information about it. I will admit I haven't used it because I have a very good light box, but she shows work that she's done with it and it appears to work well.
ReplyDeleteI just use a hp pencil, all the others for me just dont fade away, sometimes if your hands are hot, its hard to remove and doesnt always fade, in my shop i sold all kids of pens but give me the hp pencil anyday horses for courses
ReplyDeletelove your work