Sewing Tracing pattern question

pencil, either regular graphite or a color pencil. it might smear a little but it’s good practice to hold your hand at an angle where you don’t constantly rub it against the paper (but i draw also so this is just habit to me too).. colored pencil smears less tbh.

or like a micron marker, or thin sharpie marker. cheap ballpoints and sketching lightly with it also works. basically anything BUT a gel pen

 

that’s totally fair! at this point i’ve narrowed it down to what i like to use and messy/smeary/etc.. gel pens in general for writing i avoid because i hate getting too much gunk on my hands and having to stop and wash them before say going to grab food or whatever because i’m already a clutz. so i never have gel pens around. on the other hand i’ve found that for lightly sketching and stuff, cheap branded ball points that you expect to run out of ink are actually useful in those scenarios sharpie might smear a bit but if you let it dry it dries way quicker than gel pens and the nicer types of pens.

 

I use Pilot FriXion Point Erasable Gel Pens with an extra fine point. The markings don't fade over time the way many markers designed for sewing do. They work beautifully and are very easily removed with heat. The only drawback is that you have to be very careful when you do any pressing during construction or your tracing lines will disappear. It is not a problem if you only use the pen to trace a pattern that has the seam allowance included. I like to use pattern pieces with the seam allowance removed because then the traced lines become the seam lines. I can cut as big or small seam as I like. Hope this helps .

 

For drawing the pattern on paper I use a lead pencil, a colored pencil or a good old fashioned ballpoint pen.
For drawing on fabric I use tailors chalk or a frixion pen. If also mark with thread on fabric if the chalk might rub off.

 

I use Crayola watercolor pencils most of the time. The bold colors stand out well when tracing patterns from books onto paper, and the lighter colors are awesome for tracing finished patterns onto fabric to later wash out.

 

I trace all of mine onto clear plastic sheeting with a sharpie, but for paper I'd use regular printer paper (it's stronger than tissue and lasts for more uses before the pinning-to-fabric destroys it) and a pencil or any pen that doesn't smudge (usually a regular balllpoint pen is what comes to hand).

Teddy

 

Fair enough - I find that veries according to brand - the ones they provide in my office are terrible for smudging.

I have a variety of options i keep in my sewing room for marking fabric :

Frixion pens are good for marking fabric - they dissapear with heat, so iron to erase.

I also use Crayola Twistables Pencils (coloured propelling pencils) as a set can be bought quite cheaply, and they come in a variety of colours, so you've always got one that will show up on whatever colour of fabric you're using. BUT be sure your're gettign the pencil version NOT the crayon version.

There's a propelling pencil set with refills in various colours which even comes with a sharpenner to get a finer point on the chalk.

Also an ultrafine propelling chalk pencil from Bohin - it's more expensive, but it gives a finer line/is better for detail than regular tailor's chalk or the powdered stuff in the chalk rollers.

I also have a bit of old-fashioned solid taylor's chalk (I prefer the one that comes in a plastic holder with built-in sharpener on the side to keep the edge of the chalk to a fine-line), plus chalk pencis (which can be sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener).

Then there are the powdered chalk rollers, which are quick and easy for tracing aorund pattern pieces, but not as good for precison markings. These come in various shapes and sizes according to different brands/manufacturers, and are refillable with various brands of powdered chalk in different colours.

Teddy

 

Teddy, if I have a pattern I really like (commercial tissue pattern, that is) I iron it onto fusible interfacing before I cut it out. Lasts and lasts and lasts!

 

As my mother would say, "Six of one, half a dozen of the other."

I've tried the interfacing method, but still end up tracing a copy to use if it's a multi-size pattern, so that I can preserve all the sizes for later use, so it's just easier to trace whatever I want to make onto plastic sheeting rather than spend all that time ironing on interfacing and then still doing the tracing for a working copy.

Teddy

 

Colored pencils or fine tip sharpies. It's what they had us use when I was studying fashion design so it's a habit that's stuck. At least if you're tracing it onto paper.

For tracing them onto fabric i use an air/ water erasable marking pen or tailor's chalk depending on the color of the fabric. Other materials are likely to smudge or stain. Heat erasable marks can come back in colder temperatures so I don't use those personally.

 

I used to use them but avoid them now as, once, with an air reasible pen, I used it to mark the features on a rag doll, for embroidering it, and had at set the project aside for a while to work on something else. When I got back to it, some months later, expecting the marking to have disappeard in the meantime and need redoing, I found the marks had all gone as expected BUT the fabric had holes in all the places that had been marked. The air-erase ink had eaten away the fibres, or rotted through them, or something.

By that point , though, had no idea which brand of marker I'd used, so I threw all of them away and I've avoided all air-erase fabric markers ever since....

Teddy

 

Oh wow! I've never seen that happen before! I wonder what kind of marker/ fabric it was.

Oh, another method to transfer marks to fabric is pouncing, but it is time consuming and can be messy. You poke holes in the lines you need to transfer, lay the paper on the fabric, then dust over it with chalk. I've mostly seen it used for detailed embroidery patterns, but i suppose it could work for marking out pattern pieces for doll clothes, especially for smaller dolls. For larger ones, i'd think it'd take too much time.

 

I wish I knew - I had several different brands in the sewing room, and didn't know which of them I'd used. At least one fo them had no markings on the pen itself so, once removed from the packaging there was no indication of where it was from.

Overkill for this sort of application, I'd have thought, and, as you said, messy.

Teddy

 

That must have been a horrible surprise! I've never tried an air erasable marker made for fabric, but have used one that was "supposed" to be removable with heat and a bit of moisture... it wasn't. The Pilot erasable markers I mentioned are actually made to be used on paper but work really well on fabric. (These pens are much less expensive than those designed for fabric). Heat removes the marks completely. I've had some pattern pieces marked for a long time and haven't found any damage or fading yet. The only thing is that you have to be really careful using an iron during construction so you don't accidently remove markings you still want. Another nice thing is that they come in several different colours. I really love these pens for sewing

Donna

 

The frixion pens? I didn't know they were sold for anything other than fabrics, I've only ever seen them in sewing outlets.

Teddy

 

They are in with office supplies and are for use on paper (probably not the best choice for writing cheques ) Amazon carries them. I checked to see if Amazon in the UK carries them and they do:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilot-Frix...+pens&qid=1659086336&sprefix=,aps,159&sr=8-16

I really love them and use them all the time.

Donna

 

I've not had any trouble finding places to buy them, I use them all the time. it's just that because I only ever see them marketed for sewing uses so I had no idea they were regular stationery items.

Yes, the ironing away the marks while pressing your work aspect can be a bit of a two edgesword, great ocne you've finishe, a pain while you're stil workign ont he item.

Teddy

 

I even have to be careful that they don't fade with the heat from my hand when I'm hand sewing. I hand sew most of the time and the gel pen seamlines are so useful to keep me sewing in a straight line!

 

I've found that the Clover brand water-soluble pencils work really well for marking on fabric, for what it's worth. I use them to mark out parts I don't want to erase while I'm doing my pressing especially. They do have to be washed out, but they're hands-down the smoothest, easiest to work with pencils I've used (and I've tried a bunch). The downside is that I have to use a knife to sharpen them, because the tip has to be kept fairly short. The lead is soft and creamy enough that it also breaks more easily. Great for being able to mark fabric with a gentle touch (so no tugging or catching), but not so great for a pencil sharpener...

For tracing patterns onto tracing paper, which I do whenever I can't/don't feel like scanning in my patterns to just print off copies, I use a fine-tip Sharpie or a mechanical pencil. They both smudge a little, but it is hard to find things that mark on parchment paper/tracing paper well in my experience that DON'T smudge. I have just learned to live with it... Gel pens are definitely the worst though, as everyone has already told you! I only use gel pen for sometimes writing on the paper later if I need a color that stands out (and I'm not going to touch it for a while, to give the pen time to dry).

 

You can use a tracing wheel on paper.

 

For paper to paper tracing, I think I might recommend mechanical pencil if I remember the days of tracing correctly. Sharp but you can still be careful and have it be pretty visible. Once you're done tracing, you could go over it with a micron type pen and have it be even more visible if needed.
I hope I understood your question correctly and feel free to correct me if I misunderstood.

 

Regular pencil or mechanical one shouldn't make any difference to whether it smudges or not.

If your pencil is smudging, perhaps it's got a very soft lead - A regualar HB pencil would be fine but if it's a 2B or a 4B, or somehing, it might be more prone to smuding as the higher the B number, the softer the lead is.

Teddy