Welcome to my first post on Minerva reviewing the Sublime Stitching Embroidery Transfers Unicorn Believer.

The item arrived in perfect condition in a reinforced envelope preventing the pattern from being damaged or bent in the post. Until the package arrived I didn’t know which product had been chosen for me to use and review. I was really pleased with the choice as I design my own embroidery patterns & usually transfer them onto fabric by tracing with a pencil and a light source, in my case an app on my iPad, and so I was looking forward to trying a new method.

In the sealed envelope with the pattern was an instruction leaflet, one side with instructions on how to transfer the images onto fabric and the other side detailing some basic embroidery stitches.

I like to plan the layout and sizing before transferring a design and I did a very rough trace of my chosen images into a hoop template on paper. I then cut out the patterns that were required. There is enough space around each design to make cutting easy, all of which help to make the process quicker & easier.

Transferring the image to the fabric was very simple and I followed the details on the instruction leaflet by ironing the fabric first to heat it before applying the transfer. The designer comments if this part of the process is missed out the pattern may fail to transfer to the fabric. I had chosen a white cotton with a fairly tight weave as the backing Fabric & I batch cut some suitable squares to be able to experiment with the transfers.

The iron must be set to hot/cotton and with the steam settings off.

I was really pleased with how the images transferred although my first attempt wasn’t as good as the following two because I didn’t apply enough equal pressure with the iron, leaving a couple of areas that were quite pale. However, the image was still clear enough to see for stitching. The transferred image is a pale grey colour similar to a fine pencil line.

I also tested how permanent/water resistant the transfer is. I like to use fabric paints and a waterproof transfer is essential to prevent the design from running. This transfer was completely permanent and waterproof and there was no sign of bleeding into the white cotton when I applied water.

I did a couple more transfers of the smallest design and each one was equally as good. The patterns states there should be approximately 6 transfers for each image. Once the ink runs out the design can still be used as a template to trace onto fabric using my usual method.

I used two DMC Colour Variation Threads (100% cotton) for the Unicorn, heart and letters in the DMC Perle Thread. The Unicorn’s mane was stitched with a lilac DMC Metallic Thread that I had in my stock and I stitched the whole design using a simple backstitch.

The fine lines of the transfer worked well under the light coloured thread and couldn’t be seen under the stitches and also didn’t smudge whilst handling the fabric, which can sometimes happen with a pencil transfer.

The finished work was mounted in a 4 inch white Flexi Hoop.

Overall, I was really impressed with the design, ease of transferring the pattern and the quality of the transfer. I like being able to mix and match the designs and my stitches easily covered the lines of the pattern.

There are many Sublime Stitching Embroidery Transfer Designs and I plan to use more of them in the future from Minerva and have already started working on another Unicorn picture.

Thank you for reading my review,

Helen @ Just Sew Helen

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