Thick, dark fabrics are always a challenge to use in embroidery. They give a lovely result at the end, but transferring your artwork onto them to begin your project is tricky. You can't see through the fabric to trace onto it, and many transfer pens won't show up on dark colors.
A great solution for this is to use tissue paper as your transfer.
Step 1 Trace or draw your design onto tissue paper. I've used inexpensive paper left over from wrapping a birthday present here, but other types of tissue, such as facial tissue or pattern paper, can work as well. Experiment a bit to see what you like best.
Since you aren't transferring the design directly to the fabric, you need a way to affix the tissue paper to the fabric. For a small project, simply stretching the paper in your embroidery hoop with the fabric works well. For larger projects, you can use pins or basting stitches to hold the tissue paper in place.
Step 2 Embroider over your lines. You can't fill in shapes at this point, but you can outline them with a simple stitch (I used split stitch in the example above) and fill it in a later step.
Step 3Â When you're finished stitching, carefully tear away the tissue paper. The stitches will perforate the tissue paper, giving you an easy way to tear it away from the stitches. You can use small scissors and tweezers to remove any stubborn bits of paper.
Step 4 Fill any areas you left open. This is a good method for satin stitch as it helps define the edge of the shape, and I found it particularly useful on the felt since it is difficult to embroider felt with precision. It takes a little more time, but it gives a very nice result.