The Pattern Overlay: An instructional How-To

Oh goodness! I haven't been to a lot of the websites I used to frequent since I found a full time job and ran out of time for a lot of my hobbies. I get some free time today and decide to log into a few various ones and come across all sorts of messages from people wanting to get in touch with me and figure out how I did this! I'm so incredibly flattered!! ...And beyond embarrassed that some of them are over 2 years old. *blushes* I'm so sorry!

I mentioned briefly in my first post on this blog about what I did but I will try to go into a little bit more detail here so that it's more readily available should people try to find it in the future.

Okay so here, we go. Remember back when you were a kid and coloring books had those pages where you could copy a picture using a grid? Kinda like this one:

Photo borrowed from: http://www.activityexpress.co.uk/copying_and_tracing_activities.html

That is pretty much essentially it... lol.

I found a photo of a waving flag through the ever-handy google and played around with my printer, enlarging/cropping it to get it to print out the correct size. The CdC pattern from InkCircles comes with a final page that shows the full cross-stitch design minimized so it all fits on one page. It allows you to see how the pages of the pattern are connected to create the whole image and is pretty much an essential part to transforming the pattern. That is the page that I started with. I made a couple of copies of that page so that I wouldn't be scribbling all over the original.

Once I had my copied CdC final page and my flag page, I sat them both side-by-side, grabbed my ruler and drew out a grid onto both. Then I copied the simple lines from the flag drawing over to the final page.

After finishing drawing out my flag onto the new final page, I then took copies of each individual pattern page (the full-sized ones with the actual pattern on them -- again with a few personal copies to preserve the original pattern) and matched up the lines I had drawn onto those pages. The final page from CdC is quite handy in showing the general pattern to follow and it was really easy to draw them out.

Once I had my lines penciled into the actual pattern, I took out some colored pencils and color-coded my "new" pattern to match my chosen threads (kinda like paint-by-numbers). Then it's just business as usual with the stitching! :) 

It's super-easy to do and kind've a *slaps forehead* D'oh! moment once it's all laid out and explained. *giggles* And, the "technique" can easily be applied to any other cross-stitch/embroidery pattern too! Although I find the InkCircles "Cirques" patterns and their other sampler-type pieces to be the best for expanding creatively since they don't already come with pre-arranged floss colors and give you the freedom to choose your own.

I hope it helps anyone who happens to still be interested. I'm so sorry it took me so long to realize that anyone wanted more information on it.