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Embroidered alphabets are different from
fonts. You don’t use them to type out a word in your
embroidery machine or software. To spell out a word, you
lay out letters side by side, in embroidery software or
just by stitching, exactly like you would arrange any
other embroidery designs. We’ll show you both ways to do
this...
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Laying Out Letters by Hand
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Let's start with the old school way. This method involves laying it all out by hand, and this is the method you’ll want if you don’t have software that can lay out designs OR if you’re working with more letters than can fit in your hoop.
By the way, if you CAN lay it out in your software, it’s a lot easier. Trust me. Skip down to the software layout section if you don’t wish to do it by hand. |
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First and foremost, you’ll need templates to lay out your words (we used letters from the Cirque Alphabet). You’ll also want some scissors, a disappearing fabric marker, and something to embroider on, perhaps this first time, a fabric scrap.
You may want to test out your alphabet skillz before you go embroidering on that big ol’ pillow you already spent 8 hours on.
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Start by roughly laying out your
letters. See if you can get your word or phrase to fit
inside your available hoop size. This will save you from
re-hooping during the project.
Don’t worry if it won’t fit, that’s what
all this measuring and marking is here to help with.
However, if it CAN fit, it will make your life a lot
easier. And we like easier.
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When laying out your letters, there are
a few things to keep an eye on. The biggest one is going
to be keeping your words centered above each other (or a
matching design). Shift your templates around so that
any stacked words look properly centered in relation to
each other.
The next thing to keep an eye out for is
spacing between the letters. Eyeballing it is usually
enough. However, just keep it in mind when you’re making your
final marks.
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Here’s how we get our letters all lined
up and pretty. You’ll notice that your printed template
has crosshairs on it. These lines go right through the
middle of each design, and they’re just what you need to
line things up.
Move your letters so the horizontal
marker on your templates all line up in one straight
line. This is how you’ll assure your letters will stay
level with each other.
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Keeping the letters even, poke a hole in
the center of each crosshair and mark a dot with your
disappearing fabric pen.
(Don’t forget to keep an eye out on the
spacing in between the letters!)
Make sure you’re keeping that horizontal
marker level each time you make a mark! This is what
we’ll use to not only keep our letters even, but also how
to hoop it straight for sewing.
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Ta da! Now we have the marked center
dots for “L-I-F-E.” They should all look level with each
other.
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Moving downward, make sure your next
letters and words are properly centered. I placed the
“L-I-F-E” templates back on the fabric to better
estimate.
Repeat the process, leveling the
horizontal marker and adding a dot for each letter.
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Once all your dots are ready, it’s time
to hoop!
When hooping, use the horizontal
direction of all your dots to make sure your hoop is
straight. The side markers on your hoop should line up
with one row of your horizontal dots.
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Now it’s time to sew! Tell your machine
to move the hoop so your needle is over the first dot
of the letter you wish to stitch. Load up that design
and get to it!
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As long as your word or phrase is all
going to fit inside your hoop, all you need to do is
center the needle over the next design’s dot, and you
should be able to stitch out your words with precision.
If your design is too large, you may
need to re- hoop, but as long as you use your markers to
keep your hoop lined up horizontally, everything will
stitch out just fine.
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Laying Out Letters in Embroidery Software
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If you have embroidery software on your computer,
you might find it handy to arrange your letters into a word before
you send the whole business over to your embroidery machine. The
advantages of this, are that you can get the letters lined up all
nice and precisely onscreen, and it requires a lot less thought and
attention once you’re actually stitching.
The main disadvantage is the size limitation -- your
entire arrangement must fit within your machine’s embroidery area,
if you want to stitch it all in one shot.
I’m demonstrating how to do this using
Embird. If
you’re using different embroidery software, the process should be
pretty similar -- as long as you have the ability to merge
embroidery designs together, you’re good to go.
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Ready? Great.
This might seem putzy at first, but once
you get the hang of it, it’ll go pretty quickly. Get a
picture in your mind of how you want your text to look.
Now open up Embird, and open up the first letter in your
word/phrase. Click on “Editor” at the very top of the
Embird window to go into editor mode. The colors might
look strange -- don’t worry about that.
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Under “Options,” choose the hoop size
you’ll be working with. This is nifty because it’ll give
you a clear view of how much space you have to work
with.
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Time for more letters! Click the “File”
menu at the top of the screen, then “Merge.” Select the
next letter you want to insert. (If you check that
little “Preview” box, it’ll show you which letter you’re
choosing.) Click "OK" to open the design.
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Once you’ve opened each letter design,
drag it to about where you want it to be. We’ll
fine-tune the placement later -- you just don’t want all
the letters piling up in the middle.
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After you’ve opened all the letters
you’re going to use, drag them around to arrange them
exactly how you’d like. The grid lines are handy for
this.
Select everything in your arrangement,
then choose "Edit" --> "Center" --> "Both Axes"
to center the design in the hoop.
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When you’re satisfied with your
arrangement, click "File" --> "Save As" and
save your design with a filename that you’ll recognize.
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But our letters have not quite come
together yet, as you can see in the upper right corner
of the Embird window.
At the very top of the Embird
window, click “Manager” to go into Manager mode. Then
click “Editor” to go back into Editor mode.
And voila ...
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...you’re looking at your design!
One more thing to do, MAYBE. See all those
little boxes? They represent color stops, and right now
there’s one for each letter. Which means you’d have to
poke your machine to start stitching again, every time it
gets to a new letter. IF you're using one-color letter designs, and you want to
stitch them all in the same color, we can make things easier than
that. Hooray for computers.
(If you're using letter designs that have more than one
color per letter, you're going to want to skip this step, and just get ready to
change the thread a whole bunch.)
To merge them, right-click on the tiny
image of your design next to the color boxes (LIFE IS
A CIRCUS), and choose “Reduce Colors” from the menu...
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...and set it to reduce colors to 1.
Click "OK."
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That’s more like it!
Now you can save the design, then
transfer it to your embroidery machine to stitch it out.
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Your machine will stitch out everything
for you as one seamless design, and you don’t need to
worry about measuring, marking, or aligning anything!
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Either way you do it, the result is the
same: you now have some awesome alphabet-ness to play
with!
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Use your
alphabet
designs to add whimsical accents or names to designs, or just let the
letters shine on its
own.
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The point is, either with some simple
marking or some slick computer work, you can add fun
text to anything!
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Suggested designs for this tutorial:
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