Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? But I really do mean it literally – sanding (as in, with sandpaper) your embroidery patterns! It makes a Big Difference!

Lately, I’ve been using the prick-and-pounce method to transfer most of the embroidery designs I’ve been stitching. I like this method. It’s accurate. It’s “re-usable.” It works. So when a reader commented on my post about prick & pounce embroidery design transfers that she sands the back of her pattern and it really makes a difference in the transfer, I thought I should try that out.

I didn’t have any fine-grade sandpaper on hand, because I don’t do a lot of fine-grade sandpaper stuff. But I did have a square nail buffer that has different grades for smoothing fingernails on each side of it. So I used that to test the whole sanding idea, and it worked well! Problem was, I didn’t want to ruin my favorite nail tool (that cost a whopping $4) by sanding paper with it. So I betook myself to a beauty supply store one day, and came across the above sanding block for fingernails. I figured it’s easy to hold onto, it’s fine grade, it’s only 89¢ – so why not take it home to try it out?

This is the back of the tracing paper, once the design has been pierced through. (You can see instructions for how this is done on my previous article about prick & pounce embroidery design transfer.)

After lightly sanding the back of the paper, the bumps are gone. Without the bumps, the pounce powder makes a much cleaner “dot” at every hole. It really does make a difference!

And the really fun thing about sanding the back of your embroidery patterns is that, after you’ve finished sanding, you can pick up the paper and see this:

So if you like to prick & pounce your embroidery patterns, you might consider sanding the back of them, to get a cleaner transfer. You can use a very fine grade sandpaper, or if you happen to have one of these little fine-grade emery blocks for your fingernails, they work great, too!