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You know how I’m always saying you can play with the size of your embroidery patterns? Well – here’s a prime example. As soon as she saw the finished dogs my daughter squealed, “Ooooooh! That one is soooooo cute! Will you please stitch it on a T-shirt for me?”

Before I could even answer her she had pulled a blank T-shirt out of her closet and chosen the thread color she wanted for the dog.

I enlarged the pattern on the computer (you could use a copy machine if that’s more convenient). 6″ tall seems to be a great size for all T-shirt embroidery.

This post has some instructions for enlarging an embroidery pattern.

It’s important to NOT skip the stabilizer step with any embroidery on stretchy fabric — there’s a how and why video here.

Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy is what I use for all T-shirt embroidery. Pattern transfer and stabilize in one easy step – you’ve got to love that! See how it works in this video.

Enlarging the pattern made the lines really thick (remember – I was sizing up from a pattern that was less than 2 inches tall). I used a full 6 strands of thread to get a nice heavy backstitched line. I satin stitched the eyes and attached a little fleece nose with simple running stitches. An hour and a half later I had one finished T-shirt and one very happy daughter. 🙂

Here are all my posts about working with patterns.

Pattern Sources

• My book – How to Embroider Almost Everything – has over 500 motifs
• My digital pattern shop
• My free patterns
• How to Work with Digital Patterns
• How to Work with Digital Patterns If You Don’t Have a Printer

How to Resize a Pattern

• How to Transfer and Stabilize an Embroidery Pattern (my preferred method)
• How to Transfer an Embroidery Pattern (other methods)
• How to Enlarge or Reduce Digital Patterns
• How to Use a Tiny Embroidery Pattern to Stitch a T-shirt

Return to the Learn to Embroider main Table of Contents.

Move on to the posts about knots. Yes – a whole section about knots. 🙂