using crayon in an embroidery project ???

Aug 07, 2007 10 Replies

My children, ages 4 and 8, produce quite a bit of artwork. Page after page, in fact. While not all of the drawings are amazing, they do come up w/ some pretty cute things. Most of them are flowers, butterflies, rainbows and other sorts of little girl things. So ... that got me to wondering. Lately I have been embroidering dishtowels, mostly redwork designs. I have been thinking that if i could trace their drawings and color them in w/ the colors they have chosen and then embroider the outline of the drawings ... it may be just the thing that a grandma would love for Christmas. I really don't want to fill the whole design w/ embroidery because I feel as though that would loose some of the "crayon" character of the pictures. I also don't want to have them draw directly on the towels, I would like to pick and chose the best drawings. Do you have any suggestions on what I could use as the crayon? I'm afraid that paint wont work because it will crack w/ use and I'm afraid that using a dye would be too complicated and messy. Also, I think there are a few grandma's here ... does this sound like a good gift to you? Or should I just table the idea and move on to something else? Thanks,


There are crayons that you iron to keep the color - don¹t recall the brand though. A trip to the craft store will solve that.. C

Crayola has a type of crayon that you have the kids use to color on a piece of paper, then you iron that paper onto your fabric, and it transfers the colored picture. I had my kids do a bunch of pillow cases one year for gifts that way, and it went over quite well. At that time I believe of box of 8 crayons was around $2.39 or so. I found them at JoAnn Fabrics and Wal-Mart.

Carolyn

They work well--but just remember that the image gets reversed in the process. They'd look charming with some embroidered embellishment.

Best wishes, Ericka

I am sure (well, I think I'm sure) I've seen crayons that you color on the fabric and then heat set... C

Well, couldn't you also scan in the pictures and print them as an iron-on transfer?

I think this idea is simply lovely as gifts. You might think about framing them (with your embellishments) rather than putting them on cloth. I'd treasure that. I have a large plate with hand prints of my grandsons and it has a place of honor on a bookshelf in our den.

Dianne

Great! Thanks, I don't know how I missed them ... maybe I just wasn't looking :) I'm going to the craft store this weekend, I'll find them.

>

I don't think being reversed will be a problem .. but it is a good thing to keep in mind. I have a feeling that I will take their art and copy it ... that way I can pick the pics that I want to use.

Thank you, somehow I missed that there was such a thing as fabric crayons.

I'll give the towels a try first. If it works well than I may do a few other things. Thanks ;)

We used to do that with ordinary wax crayons, but I think the formula has changed, and the pigments now used wash out easier.

Use lots of newsprint or paper towels to soak up the melted wax while ironing the design. We used to put a paper towel between the design and a pile of newsprint, but nowadays you can get roll-ends of clean newsprint at a newspaper office.

Joy Beeson

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