Belated Housewarming Gift

The stars aligned for me back in February when friends of ours moved into a new apartment and Sublime Stitching released an amazing pack of Ryan Berkley transfers.

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The illustrations reminded me of Fantastic Mr. Fox and I instantly fell in love.  Even more perfect, I know my friend loved the animation in Mr. Fox, so embroidering these lovelies onto some tea towels seemed like the perfect housewarming gift.  I quickly ordered the PDF transfers and then waited for my Most Awesome Tea Towels to arrive in the mail so I could get working.

They arrived a few days later and, since I printed the transfers on a laser printer, attempted to iron the transfers onto the tea towels.  I've never done this before and was a little skeptical that it would work.  I'm thinking I didn't apply as much pressure or keep the iron on for long enough, because the images were just barely visible on the towels.  The detailing is so fine on the patterns that I was worried about trying to re-transfer the transfers, so I attempted to continue with very faint lines.

You know where this is going.  I got through Mr. Fox's necktie and jacket collar before I decided to cut my losses and start fresh.  That was 4 months ago, which officially puts me in the bad friend category.

I ordered new tea towels and this time around,  I decided use carbon paper and trace the transfers with a stylus.  This is how I spent today's lunch.

I'm partial to the iron-on method of transfers, but I'm no stranger to using carbon paper.  Jenny Hart makes things so easy for us by providing great transfer tools through her store, which is where I got my stylus and carbon paper.  The stylus has two different sized ends for you to choose from depending on the detailing of your pattern.  I used the finer end for these patterns.

Much better!  How awesome does carbon paper look after you've traced a pattern.  This could be set against a light background and framed as artwork itself!  Excuse the upside down Pennsylvania, which I traced for another recent project.  Once I get that project framed I'll be sure to share it with you!

I'm really hoping it doesn't take me another 4 months to get through this project!