Sam in Japan

I can’t be the only person who has looked at a houndstooth pattern and see little cats, can I? I mean, it even has ears!

Right?

RIGHT?!

So, for the heck of it, I decided to modify a houndstooth into a “catstooth” pattern, featuring little black and white kitties.

Not happy enough to just prove that’s what it totally is from a vector in Illustrator, I figured I’d embroider it, too, because why not. It seemed to be quick and simple, should make for a good evening project.

Quick it was, but simple it was not. I realize, now, that I need to step up my game with regards to satin stitches. Hard. Oh, and french knots. I suck at those.

You can find the pattern to try it yourself here!

This is only about 2″ high, and I used something new to get the design onto the fabric. I found this transfer design paper at Daiso (￥100 store) that dissolves in water. I was having a very hard time holding the fabric up to my laptop screen to try to transfer the design decently, especially for small pieces like this, with straight lines.

The transfer paper is almost like a medical tape – it is see-thru enough to hold it up to my laptop to get the design on it, and then you peel off the top layer and it sticks like a sticker to your fabric. When you’re done, you soak it for a bit and it dissolves. I think it’s some sort of gelatin base, since it feels icky when you’re washing it.

Also, time for a friendly reminder to prewash and shrink any fabric you’re working with, for anything.

The only real issue I had with this material was there was still a lot of adhesive along the very edge of where the sticker was, even after you soak it and get all the other transfer stuff dissolved off.

So, if it is on a delicate fabric, I’m not sure how well it would work, since I had to kind of scratch it off to clean it.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the finished piece – it is still drying from washing out the transfer film. I may actually make a patch out of it, by doing a button hole stitch around the outside, and reinforcing it with a heavier material (right now, it’s on lightweight bleached cotton used for making kimono mockups, like 90% of my embroidery).

So there was my experiment into “Catstooth” design! I’ll post the finished piece when I decide what to do with it, but odds are, it will wind up in a bin for ages ^^;