How to Embroider a Basic T-shirt Dress

For original post by Nicole Smith visit

http://www.craftstylish.com/item/52246/how-to-embroider-a-basic-t-shirt-dress

Here, Jacquard fabric paint and a bit of embroidery turn this basic piece into a stunner. Embroiderer extraordinaire, Erika Kern, created this floral design that can be paired with black leggings or jeans for an effortlessly stylish look. For more from Erika, check out her blog, or her tutorials on CraftStylish. The paint helps stabilize the knit fabric, making this project super easy to stitch without the use of stabilizer.

1. Draw a rose motif. First, decide where and how big you want your rose to be. Using a photocopier, enlarge the template to the desired size. Using tailor’s chalk or carbon tracing paper, transfer the flower onto your garment. The shape of the flower should be organic, so don’t worry too much about making it perfect. To add visual interest, allow your flower to wrap around the side and over the edge of the dress. If you are concerned about getting the right shape, practice your flowers on scrap paper before you mark the top.

 

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2. Paint the rose. Once you’re happy with the design for your dress, slide the cardboard into the dress, and start painting. The cardboard ensures that the paint won’t seep to the other side and onto the dress fabric. Use a nice, flowing stroke to paint the petals, allowing thicknesses to vary. Allow the paint to dry, and heat-set with an iron, as directed in the paint instructions.

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3. Add hand embroidery to make the design stand out. If you’re stitching along the painted petals, you should be fine without any stabilizer. The slight stiffness added by the paint should be enough support for the jersey fabric. If you add embroidery in the non-painted areas, put a layer of water-soluble stabilizer behind your stretch fabric. Use a chainstitch (illustrated below) to accent your design as shown.

 

Bring your needle from the wrong to the right side, and make a loop. Insert the needle back through the fabric, starting at the loop top and back out through the loop base.

Continue making loops starting the next inside the previous one as shown.

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4. Finish the dress. If you used stabilizer, follow the manufacturer’s instructions on how to remove it with water.

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One Response to “How to Embroider a Basic T-shirt Dress”

  1. I found this tutorial incredibly informative, the imagery detailing the embroidery stitching technique was a small but added bonus as sometimes its hard to tell just through text how a stitch is supposed to appear.

    Are you intending on blogging further tutorials such as this?

    Thanks

    http://www.numberseventysix.blogspot.com

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