Vintage Embroidery Patterns

By coincidence, a student brought me some vintage embroidery patterns that had been her mother's- refugees from a general household clean-up and declutter - the same day I came prepared to demonstrated brush embroidery. The students were enthusiastic about the technique, while I couldn't wait to see if I could put these patterns to use.

My first idea was to lay the image on the clay - a platter in this case, made just minutes before - and trace the lines with a blunt tool. That worked, sort of, but the paper is unbelievably fragile, and kept tearing. I hadn't read the directions - oh hell no, who has time for that? - or I would have already known what I discovered next: the blue lines of the image are water soluble, intended as a press-on transfer. Like this:

Next I drew over the faint blue image - if you look close you can see it - with the slip trailer, and used the stiff brush as in the brush embroidery video.

There are a world of embroidery transfer patterns out there, both vintage and current, but once I have used these - mostly in class, probably - I am interested in if you could do something similar with a water-soluble marker, and make your own.

Maybe we'll try it in class this week.