In order to avoid feeling rushed (during the first week) and panicked (during the second week), I decided to continue preparing for the actual stitching of the gold threads by having all the preparation done before the first class. Last year I was taught how to transfer the design using the prick, pounce and paint method. I'd also used it a few times during the year so I felt pretty confident. It also helped that Nicola Jarvis, my teacher, was nearby when I started to paint the design onto the silk.Below is a video of the painting on process. There are a few tricks to doing it, the most important for me was to paint short lines, about 2 cm long, rather than trying to do long sweeping lines. Those sweeping lines tend to sweep right off the pounced design!

 Gold work: painting the design onto the silk

To summarize:The design was1. copied onto tracing paper,2. pricked with a needle on the lines of the design making holes in the paper about 1 cm apart (see below)Not all of the elements of the design were pricked - some will have felt padding under the gold threads and the felt will define the shape. (that post is coming soon!)3. pricked design on the tracing paper placed onto the silk, centering it correctly4. pounce applied making a dot to dot pattern on the silk (watch this video for a demonstration)5. extra pounce removed by pounding the back of the fabric, brushing it lightly with a baby's hair brush and blowing any left pounce off the silk5. the dots on the silk were then connected with water color paint (see video above)The final design looked like this when it was finished. None of this process is particularly pretty when it's finished. It takes a while to get from the plain silk to the painted silk and, when it's finally painted, it looks as if not much has been accomplished. Trust me - the success of any embroidery project is in the preparation, especially in metal thread work. Metal threads are hard and unforgiving. It's important to do everything you can to ensure that when it's time to apply the metal threads to the fabric there will be very little room for error.Next time I'll be telling you about the work I did on the first day - applying the felt padding to the silk. and then it will be time to start stitching the gold thread onto the fabric! Wooeee!