Downloading an Embroidery Design

There are a lot of sites that provide embroidery designs. And for some of us that is a good thing! One that I've used is called Urban Threads. It has some great contemporary designs. In this post, I'm going to write about selecting a design and how to use it.

Magpie Quilters has a challenge we're working on; everyone has a piece of linen/cotton and is to embellish one square for each member of the group. Only rules are that the finished piece is to be 3.5"x3.5", a clear quarter inch band around the perimeter (to allow it to be sewn into a project), and the embellishment must include some green. Pretty simple, eh?

When I sat down to decide what I wanted to do, I knew I'd like to do some hand embroidery and maybe some beads. Then I started to think about the design. hhmmm. There are flowers, geometrics...oh, and there are Celtic Knots. I have a soft spot in my heart for Celtic Knots. 

So I went onto the Urban Threads site to see what they had. There were a few different Celtic Knots to choose from. After looking through them and deciding what I wanted to do, this is the one I selected.

You can see that when purchased, the design can be either for hand or machine embroidery. In my case I wanted it for hand embroidery.  Next I considered what I'd have to do to get that pattern on fabric myself (via light box - assuming I had one!) I thought the price of $1 was reasonable. Once I paid the fee, I received an email from Urban Threads with the download which I saved to my hard drive:

 As I mentioned previously, I don't have a light box, so I had to look for an alternative to get the design on my fabric.  I shrunk the pattern down to about a 3" square and printed two copies. Then I got a piece of freezer paper, ironed it onto my fabric and ran it through my printer. Voila!

The nice thing about having the design on a bigger piece of fabric is that I'm able to put it in a hoop. I decided to use the simple back stitch  with a very fun and colorful embroidery thread.

I'm really pleased with the result. I'll use the same Celtic Knot again and change it up a bit.  Maybe some  beads...love to use beads. If you're interested in adding embroidery to a project, give some of the web sites like Urban Threads a look; you might find something inspiring that will really compliment your project. Happy stitching!