Aunt Martha's Iron On Embroidery

If you like the simple embroidered designs you see on vintage aprons, dish towels, and pillow cases, chances are they were made from an Aunt Martha's Hot Iron Transfer pattern. These are the cute designs of cartoon characters doing the laundry, or shopping, or gardening, with a day of the week as part of the design, that you see on the dish towels. They are the beautiful flower garden patterns, like you see on pillow cases or aprons. There are designs for the kitchen to decorate pot holders, or curtains. There are antique car designs, Holiday designs, simple cross stitch, alphabets and numerals for monograms.  

The patterns range from elegant, in the cutwork embroidery designs, to whimsical, in the dish towel designs, to the fun and frolic of country folks having fun. Each packet comes with several designs printed on newsprint type paper, and can be used several times before fading. With the purchase of a transfer pencil, which is similar to a red wax pencil, you can then trace over the design and print more.

 The use of these patterns is not limited to embroidery. The designs can be imprinted on something  for use with paints or crayons, be made into appliques, traced for scrapbooking, or the old craft of woodburning; use your imagination to come up with many ideas.

To imprint the patterns on fabric, you need an iron and ironing board or similar padded board, some straight pins,(no plastic head pins, they will melt under the iron) and the washed fabric for your project. You cut out the section of the pattern you want, leaving a bit of space around the design for the pins, lay the pattern face down on the fabric, making sure it is the right direction that you want it to be, pin in place. From there follow the instructions on the package, but generally they are: Set your iron on cotton, use a dry iron (no steam or moisture), then when it is hot, apply iron, moving slowly back and forth on paper. Gently lift one corner of the paper to check for a clear stamping, and if it is you are done. Let cool and remove from fabric. If it isn't quite clear enough, don't move pins or paper, but apply iron again. That's it, you have a stamped piece ready for decorating.

These make a good simple project for doing basic embroidery. Choose some basic colors of embroidery thread, a pack of embroidery needles, a small embroidery hoop, and a cotton dish towel or a white pillow case and you've got a quick project for decorating or for a gift.

The Aunt Martha's patterns have been around for decades. They are in a yellow packet, and over the years have had a pink border, white border, green border or no border. The cost for a packet is about $1.00 to $1.50 new, and I've seen them in Wal-mart's crafts section with the embroidery thread. A Google search will bring up ones available on the internet.

Embroidery is a simple peaceful past time. Turn off the TV and start a project. Now is a great time for that. Enjoy!