More about coloring an embroidery pattern on fabric

This is a followup of the post I made about Painted Embroidery - bringing your artwork to life .

 Here are a couple that I "painted" with crayons.................I traced the pattern onto white cotton muslin using my new light box. I used a Micron ink pen because the ink is permanent. Just use a very light touch with the ink pen.

After the ink outline was on the fabric, I started to color with regular "Crayola"

crayons. There is a technique, even to this. Color very lightly! And make sure all strokes are in one direction.....in other words, don't color "back and forth". And if you press too hard you will cause a wax buildup. 

On the blue skirt above....I colored it lightly with blue crayon and then went back and added layers of more blue where I wanted the shading. It's amazing how nice these fabric pieces can look. And they are even more beautiful in person than the picture shows.

When I finished all of my coloring, I put a piece of white paper under the finished piece, and a piece of white paper on top of the finished piece and ironed with an iron set to "high". When lifting the top sheet of paper, you will see that the excess crayon has come off on the paper. That's a good thing. (There should not be much that comes off) 

Now the color left on the fabric is "heat set" and permanent. It can be washed  gently in cold water if necessary. I would not recommend putting this in an electric dryer though....if it is just a small piece, I would lay it flat to dry and then iron. If it was used as a quilt block, I would tumble dry the quilt on just "air dry" (no heat). Just to be safe.

I did several different pieces (it goes very quickly) and will show more in a later post.

I got my 10x12 LightTracer Light Box  from Amazon and I love it! I'm wondering how I ever did without it. It's so much easier to use than holding your fabric up on a window and doing the tracing!