Flower transfers

Continuing with the prep work, I've started making transfers for the flowers that'll appear all the red panels on the front of the banner. I'm doing this with an iron-on transfer pencil - tracing the design with the transfer pencil, ready to iron onto linen for stitching.

There is a complication, though: when you create a transfer of something, you turn the transfer over and place it face down against the fabric to iron on, which means that the design is reversed. In some cases, such as the central cross which is symmetrical, this doesn't matter, but the flowers aren't, so it does.

So, I first trace the design using an ordinary pencil.

The traced elements, the cowslip design in this case, have been spaced out a lot more than they appear on the original - I'll explain why in a moment.

I then turn the traced version over, and trace it again, this time with the transfer pencil.

This gives a reversed design, that when ironed onto the fabric will appear the right way round again.

The reason why the various parts of the design are spaced apart on the transfer is that I'm not embroidering the flowers directly onto the velvet that'll make up the banner, as stitching onto a pile fabric like velvet isn't easy - the stitches tend to disappear into the pile. I'm stitching them onto linen, then cutting them out (very carefully!) and applying them to the velvet. I need to leave enough space between the parts of the design, to make this possible.

I'll give more details on this process, once I get that far!