How to transfer design on stitched dress-Tutorial

This is the query I often get from most my readers. For embroidery projects, transferring the design on fabric is the tedious task. One method is to use charcoal powder. Another is using white carbon paper. Though this method is easy, but for large designs,even this is time consuming.

Whatever the technique we use, transferring design on stitched garment is quite difficult , especially around neck area.

How to transfer the design:

My suggestion for embroidery on stitched fabric, avoid large or complex  designs.

This is the stitched salwar top I selected for embroidery:

The stitched dress I chose

I chose , simple Kutchwork design . I have these two designs in Kutchwark. Kutchwork designs are geometrical, something goes wrong with the design, that can be corrected. Both the designs I have are similar , I chose the first one:

Kutch design sheet

Place a book below the fabric where the design to be transferred.

Keep a book for support

 Now , place the carbon and the design , trace with a pencil or pen. Here is the design transferred on the fabric. There are some mistakes, which I can correct.

Kutchwork design transferred

Hope to complete the embroidery on this dress. I was away from hand embroidery for few months. Starting it again with this Kutch embroidery. You can view other Kutch embroidery I had worked earlier , shared in this post: Kutchwork on Salwar Top .

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Work In Progress on Wednesday - Dress design

Starting a new series on my blog. As the title says, I will be sharing about the arts and crafts projects, on which I'm working on. It can be anything , sewing, embroidery , crochet, tatting, or paper-craft etc.

Why I started this series (WIP) ?

There are two reasons , why I started this series. I can get some suggestions about the work from my readers, like about color combination, technique etc. Second is, I can post the completed work as soon as possible :)

Today , starting this series with a dress design. I had bought a hand-block printed Madhubani cloth from an exhibition. Madhubani is an ancient art , about which I have written in one of my posts. Also I have tried painting it on a wooden box. 

Madhubani paintings are also used on sarees and dresses nowadays. The clothes with hand painted Madhubani paintings are very expensive. We can also get hand block painted ones in the market now. Though these hand block printed cloths do not match the elegance of hand painted cloths, if we use it properly in designing dresses and sarees, these look very nice.

Here is the hand block printed cloth I bought:

Hand-block printed Madhubani design on cloth

Hand-block printed Madhubani design on cloth

For Madubani hand-clock printed cloth,  I have chosen hand-woven cloth in pink and off-white. The hand-block printed cloth , I want to attach as border. Here is how the combination look:

The combination for the top

Both look good. But I have chosen to make the pink cloth as top, as the duppata is off-white with Madhubani prints. What do you suggest?

Once it is stitched, will share in coming post.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Converting an old saree to frocks

Deepavali, the festival of lights started. All are in festive mood. Deepavali is not only festival of lights, I consider this as festival of shopping :) and festival of gifts. This year I have planned to give all handmade gifts to all. To gift, twin babies I stitched two frocks from an old silk saree.

This saree was gifted to me by their grand mother, who was very talented. I have written about her works and talents in my previous posts.  The saree she gifted me is here, a beautiful blue Banaras saree with silver zari border:

Many times, thought not to cut this saree, but this is the best gifts I can give to the kids. So decided stitching frocks for her grand children.

How to stitch a frock:

Though I used to stitch , my dresses earlier, recently had not stitched anything. I was out of touch of stitching dresses. I had forgotten , how to cut pattern for a frock. My old books helped me and also my sister who is an expert helped me to recollect. Here are the cuttings of the frock:

Front and back of the frock

Stitched the cuttings, and here is the top part of the frocks:

Top part of the frock

While stitching a frock , the difficult part is to stitch the top part. Once this is done, attaching the frills is very easy. So I could finish the frock within few hours. Here is the finished frock:

Frock

The twins were looking very pretty wearing the frocks.

I have the border of the saree left out. Planning to design a saree with that. Hope to share about that soon.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

 

Neck design with Kundans

After long break, back to dress design, I can't call it as dress design only neck design :-).
This one is with Black and White combination. I have designed , front and back of the neck, with Black Kundans and some crystals.
Front Neck:

 

Back neck

I am crazy about laces. Whenever I find good and unique lace I buy it. Sometimes I have designed dress for laces :-). Here is one dress , which I designed for a creme colored lace. Pink self embroidered cloth, I have attached the lace on the sleeves and edges.

 On the neck attached Pearl Kundans and motifs.

This is also , self embroidered cloth. On this I have attached Brown colored kundans along the neck.

 Closer view:

I liked all the three, obviously I made those. I have to like them :-). Which one do you liked the most?, I will be happy to know your choice.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana 

Dress design- Patchwork

After a long break , coming back to blogosphere. I could not work on any arts and craft project, because of my busy work schedule and my son's exam. My son's exam! Uff! felt like I was writing the exam .:-).

Now I could work on long pending work, design a dress with patchwork. I had bought the patches in an exhibition , and I was lucky to find exactly matching lace for those patches.

The cloth is Maroon Khadi silk, attached the lace on the border and patches on the middle. And some motifs around the patches.

Here it is:

 

Closer view of the patches and the lace:

 

 

I think , green bottom and duppata would look good on this . What do you say?

Now  working on an oil painting, soon share about that.

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Some more Tatting

In the last post I've shared about tatted motifs I made.
I have used tatted motifs in combination with hand embroidery on dresses.
Below is a short top (Kurti) I have used lace and tatted motifs:

Closer view of the motifs:

The below one is dark Brown Salwar top, on this I attached Beige colored ready-made lace , tatted motifs , Kundans with Hand embroidery on the neck

Look at this tatted Butterfly:

Isn't that cute?

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

TAST Challenge week 11-Whipped Wheel Stitch

This week's TAST challenge is Whipped Wheel stitch. You can view about TAST challenge here.
I enjoyed working with this stitch. I tried the combination of Shisha(Mirror) work and  running stitch with Whipped wheel stitch on a Salwar neck.
 Here it is:

Closer view:

Shisha(Mirror)work, Whipped wheel and running stitch

Made a big motif with Shisha (Mirror) work and Whipped wheel stitch

Visited other's works also. Really stunning works by all of them.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts also, I'm slowly getting back to hand embroidery. Its making me very busy and of course happy.  So you will see lots of work here.

So keep watching ....

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Dress with Embroidered yoke

Few months back,I had bought a yoke which has, Gujarati embroidery on it. It was lying in my stash waiting for its turn:-) . I was searching for right cloth for the elegant yoke. At last got a Batik cloth. Made it the salwar top attaching the the embroidered yoke.

 






The Golden Yellow is prominent so matched with Golden Yellow Salwar.Searched for Golden Yellow colored Batik cloth, for salwar. But could not get :-(

And matched with a Bandini Duppatta.

 I like Gujarati Embroidery, its colorful. Especially I like the Shisha  embroidery (mirror work). That reminds me, I had designed a saree with mirror work,( 15 years ago). I don't have the saree now :-(.

Now again getting back to hand embroidery. So soon I will try mirror work also.

 So wait for the post,

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Neck design

 I tried this,on one of my salwar tops. The salwar top was stitched in plain blue cloth, with boat neck. I had some pebble shaped Kundans . So attached those on the neckline.

The bottom and duppatta are in light blue color.

I feel, with little bit of hand embroidery it would have looked very nice. 

I'm slowly getting back to hand embroidery. Embroidering an " Ilakal saree" with "Kuthch work". Hope to complete that soon, at least within 3-4 months :-)

Until next post,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

TAST Challenge 2012- Week 8

When I read about this week's TAST challenge , I was very happy. This week's TAST challenge is "Chain Stitch"! I  thought, if I cannot make any new piece, I can display  my  previous works in chain stitch. Last week was hectic at office, so could not make any new piece. Yesterday I had some time to play with this stitch. So embroidered neckline of a salwar-top with combination of tatting (I will write about my works in tatting in coming posts) and chain stitch.

Brown and beige combination neckline design is here:

The motifs are tatted flower motifs and 

embroidered vine designs with chain stitch, attached kundans and highlighted the kundans with chain stitch. Hand Embroidery has unique elegance!

Here are my previous chain stitch works on sarees. For these I had used Crochet needle.

Hope you liked them.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Tit for tat

Everyone was waiting for her arrival.  My son could not wait, he went to airport to receive her . He was the one who was missing her a lot. We all too.
She arrived , brought lots of happiness, joy and lots of gifts to everyone. How fast the 15 days passed! We roamed, shopped, chatted ,giggled and also enjoyed gossips.

  Who  is this? I'm telling about my sister in law, who stays in Delhi. She came here after 2 years. Rather than  sister in law, she is my friend. We had lovely moments together. I loved all the gifts she brought for me.
 Who doesn't like these lovely gifts?
A chocolate box, I liked the chocolates as well as the decoration of the box.

And this dress, I liked the neck design, with crystals attached.

Some kurtis( tops) and a saree

I liked this one the most , a shawl with embroidery on it.

 She always likes the dresses I design. I thought this time, I will design something unique for her. As Tit for tat, whatever she has brought for me :-). She had seen the photos of sarees, which I had screen printed. So thought, design a dress with screen printing. My first choice is always blue. This time selected light blue and dark blue combination. Attached a lace,and printed floral vine motifs on the border and floral motifs inside. Attached the kunadan too. She liked this color combination. 

This is another top I designed.

  

 

Selected, Khadi silk in Green color.  Used, emboss painting for screen printing. She liked the big Peacock motif. She also suggested me to use this peacock motif to design my sister's saree. Soon I will share that also.

 This is the one I liked the most. This is again on Khadi silk, I did not use screen printing. I had a lace, which had bought from an exhibition.The lace has Dandiya dance design, embroidered on it. I attached that on the border. Luckily , I had, similar motifs to match the lace. So here is the dress.

 I have some more lace left over, so planning to design a dress for myself.
When can I complete that? Don't know :-(

I liked the Orange dress the most. Even my sister in law liked it.

Which is the one, do you like the most?