Prick & pounce:

Transferring a design to light colored fabric is usually fairly easy. If the embroidery fabric is thin, it can simply be laid over a design and traced. If the fabric is stouter and less transparent, the “window trick” usually works — taping the design to a window, then taping the fabric over it. Light from the window shining through the pattern lets you see and trace the design, as shown in this 16th century woodcut.

Marking a pattern on dark, textured, or fuzzy fabric, however, is not so easy. With dark fabric, you can’t see the design, and fabric with a fuzzy or textured surface makes it difficult to draw clear lines with a pen or pencil, even if you can see where the lines ought to go.

Add to this the requirement that markings either need to be removable, or inconspicuous enough not to show in the finished work, and you have quite a challenge.

First, find your pattern, and draw it out on stout tracing paper to the exact size you want. It’s important that the paper be transparent enough to trace through, but heavy enough that it won’t distort easily. In class we used what Iulitta recommends, 29- pound vellum from Staples, 50 sheets for $9.99. It’s a bit heavier than normal paper.

When the pattern has been traced onto the vellum, take a large sewing needle and prick holes along the design lines about every 1/8 to 1/4 inch — not so close the paper will tear, but close enough to make a clear line. Then place your pattern on the cloth, and pin it securely.

Take some ordinary chalk powder, which you can make an almost endless supply of by buying a dollar’s worth of ordinary classroom chalk, putting it into a heavy plastic bag, and pounding it to dust with a hammer. Make yourself a soft, but firm “dauber” an inch or two in diameter by rolling up a piece of felt, fuzzy scrap wool or cotton quilt batting. Use the end of this cylinder to rub or “pounce” the powdered chalk through the holes in your pattern onto the fabric. In the second woodcut on this page, you can see a lady doing exactly this. Lift a corner and peek under the pattern to be sure enough chalk is getting through.

Blow off any loose powder and carefully lift off the pattern. Then take a fine brush and watered-down watercolor paint, and “connect the dots” to paint a fine line along where you will stitch. The brush we used was a Winston & Newton sable brush, size 00, available at Michaels for $4.99 each. (Cheaper nylon brushes work well for some people, not for others.) The paint we used was Winston & Newton watercolor. Since we were using both gold and silver twist on our pattern, we painted the lines for silver twist in a very light gray, and the lines for gold in pale yellow ochre.

You can see the result at left. As I said, it worked better than I expected, and the result was a nicely marked line ready to stitch. Try it!

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