Hey All!

Happy happy spring! I am looooovin' on this Minnesota sunshine and inspired to work on a spring pattern with cute little birdies.

I recently discovered this super handy product from Sulky - Sticky Fabri-Solvy. It's a self-adhesive, water soluble stabilizer that's shown here in sheets. You can print or trace your design onto your fabric (or in this case, wool felt). It has tons of uses - a stabilizer, templates (which is what I'll be using it for in this post), and as a way to transfer an embroidery design onto dark fabrics or wool. Awesome right??!! I do agree. I do so so agree.

So let me show you how it works. I first printed my designs onto a sheet of the Fabri-Solvy. It's printer friendly which rocks because I need to make A LOT of little birds for this pattern and did not feel like tracing them all out. BUT you certainly can trace out any pattern you like. Throw it over a light box or up against a sunny window, and use a Pigma pen or water soluble fabric pen to trace out your shapes.

What shall we schtick it to...?? I'm making these little birdies out of wool felt. Today I choose...amarillo!

Cut your shapes out just beyond the traced lines. (If you use fusible web for applique, you'll find this to be basically the same process). Cut, cut, snip. Cut, cut, snip.

Peel away the release sheet...

And schtick it to your wool felt (or wool, or fabric, or...)

Adhere all those little pieces, and cut them out on the lines.

Once cut out, pull away the sticky stuff, and your shape emerges! Chirp!

Now what's really cool is that sticky stuff stays sticky for a few more rounds. I'll use the same little templates to cut out bluebirds next. Again, just adhere your shapes to the wool felt, and this time you'll cut along the edge of each shape. You can also pin your template in place once the stickiness is gone. Or... go to your printer and just print another sheet of birdies.

That's all there is to it. Easy, right? And because it's water soluble, you can stick it to dark fabric, wool, whatever, embroider right on top of it (hand or machine), and it dissolves away in warm water when you're done. Super cool. Just be sure both your fabric and thread are colorfast.

Tweet tweet say the goldfinch. Chirp chirp say the bluebirds.

Click here to visit my website for fun embroidery patterns. And stay up to date on new patterns (this one's coming sooooon!) by LIKING Blueberry Backroads on Facebook.

Happy spring!

Sara