• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

London Embroidery School

Central London based Embroidery School

  • About
    • Blog
  • Classes
    • Digital Embroidery
    • Couture Tambour Beading
    • Goldwork
    • Traditional Techniques
    • Introduction to Embroidery
    • Lace Embroidery
    • Flower Making
    • Monogramming
    • Silk Shading
    • Private Tuition
    • Gift Certificate
      • Gift Certificate
  • Online Classes
    • Kits
    • Online Classes
  • Equipment & Materials
    • Kits
    • Specialist Materials
    • Specialist Equipment
    • Beads, Sequins & Others
      • Beads & Sequins
    • Masons Military Badge & Button
      • Blazer Badge
      • Buttons
      • Cap Badge
      • Cufflinks
      • Lapel Pin
      • Pin Badge
      • Tie Bar
  • Contact
    • Custom Embroidery
    • Contact Us
  • FAQ
  • £0.00

Pro Tips: Pricking a Design

Thursday 11th April 2019 by Natasha Searls-Punter

Prick and Pounce as a method of transfering a design onto your cloth is a great way to get an accurate draft to work from. Much of the embroidery process is about the preparation of your materials and design, as if your preparations are not right the final piece will never be that great no matter how skilled your subsequent stitches.

Prick and Pounce is the traditional way of doing this and they way we favour. This does not mean that there aren’t other ways of doing your design transfer that might be equally sucessful, or easier for your particular project, such as using a light box or dissolvable pens. Each method has their pros and cons, you just have to choose which you think is best for what you are looking to create.

Firstly, trace your design outlines onto some tracing paper with an area of unused tracing paper around the edge. This is important as when we come to pounce the design, we do not want any stray pounce marking around the edges (see future post for more details on pouncing).

 

Then using a pin or needle (having a needle mounted in your tambour handle can make this process easier as it gives you similar control to drawing- see previous post on using a tambour handle as a pricker for more details) make a series of holes through the traced lines you created. There are some conficting opinions on which side of the design you should use to prick from. We prefer to prick the design from the back (as shown) as each hole you make forces the tracing paper to create a little channel of the displaced tracing paper which is then on the rightside of your design. This makes the rightside rougher with the holes formed which catches the pounce as you pass it over the design.

Therefore when you are pricking, it is important that you keep the angle of the needle at 90 degrees to the paper (verticle) so that the channel created is straight through the paper so as not to distort the design when the pounce falls through it.

View this post on Instagram

New pro tips blog up today on how to pick a design for embroidery, our catch up with all our pro tips series on the blog too! #protips #embroidery #preparation

A post shared by London Embroidery School (@londonembschool) on Apr 11, 2019 at 4:09am PDT

Filed Under: Embroidery, Embroidery Equipment, News from London Embroidery School Tagged With: design, design transfer, drawing, embroidery, hand embrodiery, hand embroidery, pounce, pouncing, pricing, prick and pounce, pricker, pro tips, stitching, tracing paper

Footer

Contact

+44 (0) 20 7886 8678

classes@embroidery.london

Join our mailing list

Please sign up to our mailing list today.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

© Copyright 2021 London Embroidery School · All Rights Reserved · Site by Peter Mahoney

The shop will remain open but please be patient as we are working with fewer staff. Also please be aware that Royal Mail/ International Postal Services are running with a small delay. Thank you. Dismiss