Free pattern: Embroidered devil's trap

My husband and I had so much fun at the Emerald City Comicon last year, and we are really looking forward to attending again.  I have been spending some time planning my costume for 2014.  We both want to go easy and comfortable, and we have already established that we are big Supernatural fans.  We have set my husband up with Dean's jacket and amulet, and I thought it would be fun to put on a slinky black cocktail dress and some scleral contacts and go as a crossroads demon.  (I mean, for Pete's sake, CROWLEY is going to be there!  There has to be a demon in the audience.)  I plan on embroidering a devil's trap onto a black purse to complete the look.

I went for a simplified version of the devil's trap, so it would be recognizable from a distance.  At some point, I may design a more involved one for the quilt.  It would be fun to quilt that over the entire quilt as my quilting.  Ooooh, shivers up the spine.  :)

Here, I am using the Saral transfer paper to trace my design.

To transfer the design, I used this magical thing called Saral transfer paper.  When I did my Doctor Who Stitch-Along quilt, I used a natural cream for the background, so all I had to do was use the window as a lightbox and trace the design straight on to my fabric.  But what to do about dark fabric?  I have tried using the pencils that you transfer with the iron, but you have to print your design backward and they just don't transfer well for me.  I haven't tried carbon paper, but when I was looking for a good option, I discovered the Saral transfer paper and decided to give it a try.  It is so easy to use, is mess-free, can be used multiple times, and leaves a great design behind that is easy to follow.  Much like a chalk pencil for marking sewing patterns, the design sticks around long enough to be useful, but erases very easily, if you even have to at all.  On this design, I did absolutely nothing to remove the marks, as the embroidery floss covered it.  There are also several different colors you can use for different fabrics.  Honestly, I can't recommend it enough.

I actually love the look of the chalky transfer on the black fabric.  Too bad I can't capture that permanently! 

I stitched the design using chain stitch for the pentagram and backstitch for the symbols.  It works best if you stitch the star first, as you would traditionally draw one, so that the lines cross over each other neatly.  Then stitch the circle so that the circle covers the very ends of the points of the star.  I turned my tester into a quilt block for my Supernatural quilt.  Although the block was originally intended to be 10.5" unfinished on one solid background, I felt it was missing something for a quilt.  I trimmed the block down to 8.5" and added sashing on each side to round it out to the original size.  I love the effect of the red with the black.  I did accidentally leave one small line out of one symbol, so I will be adding that in and correcting the photo when I post it to Flickr.

The finished product! Minus one line that I accidentally left out but will correct.  I am really going to have to work to press my embroidery hoop line out of this; Kona cotton seems to hold a crease really well.

You can download the pattern here or on Craftsy.

I have an angel tablet and/or demon tablet swimming around in my head now ...  perhaps a mix of paper piecing and embroidery?