Embroidery WIP

My progress on projects is only getting slower, so this would-be Valentine's gift for my sister is now a spoiled surprise, but hey, I'm working on it!

That wrinkled mess is a flour sack towel from the Martha Stewart collection at Macy's. It seems like it will make a nice lint-free towel, except the slightly loose weave makes the embroidery a little tricky. I'm stitching using the split stitch with four strands of floss. I've switched from using an embroidery needle to what's called a chenille needle, and I couldn't be more pleased. The chenille needle is shorter and the eye is long and slender, making it much easier to thread.

This is the first time I've attempted creating my own transfer as in the past I've used the iron-ons, evidenced by the images of a hand mixer forever printed on my ironing board from my first embroidery project. Oops!

This time I bought one of the mystery pencils at the craft store labeled "Heat Transfer." The transfer process is easy. Print out or free-hand your design (taking care to mirror text), trace your design onto tracing paper, then iron on to fabric. In order to get my image to show on the fabric, I had to draw pretty thick lines, and from what I've read this stuff doesn't wash out. It worked fine for this project since I'm using pink floss anyway, but in the future I think I'm going to have to find a better transfer pencil or method.

My transfer, after lots of line-thickening and lots and lots of ironing:


By the way, the quote pays homage to the comedian Chelsea Handler, but I also don't drink to make myself more interesting. I can say that it probably makes me more fun, though! ;)