Big Monograms!

Posted by on June 24, 2013

mwp

Good afternoon! I’m excited to be “back to work” this week after being lazy at the beach all last week with my family. When I say family, I mean throughout the week we had 17 people under one roof. My entire family goes for a week every summer to the Seagrove/Seacrest Beach area. We are enjoying summer and trying to stay cool! I posted this PFG (Performance Fishing Gear) shirt a few weeks ago. I did this for my 13 year old niece. I’m sure she saw it on Pinterest or something! This shirt led me to this post on adjusting fonts in Monogram Wizard Plus to make your monograms BIG. It’s certainly not rocket science, but perhaps you haven’t thought about it much. You can adjust the width of your fonts so that the end result is a big monogram that fills the hoop as much as possible!

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Pardon my photos. I’m sure there is a screen-capture-something that is easier to use than Prt Sc, then opening and pasting in Paint, blah blah blah. I’ll do my research on that. In the meantime, here are MY screen shots via my camera. This is just a regular monogram done in Monogram Wizard Plus using Kim Single font. As you can see (with your magnifying glass perhaps), the Letter Size is 1.67 and everything else (i.e. boldness, letter width, kerning, etc) is default 100. At Letter Size 1.67, the name turns out to be 2.09″ tall and 7.03″ wide, which would probably fit in your 5×7 hoop just fine. Not too bad, but by adjusting the Letter Width, you can make the name taller which appears bigger even though you are still in the 5×7 hoop.

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Here I adjusted the Letter Width to 85 and the Letter Size to 1.95. My name is now 2.45″ tall and 7.02″ wide. Basically what I am doing is making the letters “skinnier” and taller. Width of the name stays about the same to fit in the 5×7 hoop.

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Here I decreased the Letter Width down to 75 and Letter Size to 2.20. Now my name is 2.77″ tall and 6.99″ wide. By decreasing the Letter Width and increasing the Letter Size, Mallory is now almost 3/4″ taller than what I started out with! With some fonts you can also adjust the Kerning, which makes letters closer together or farther apart. With this particular font I can’t really get them any closer together.

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You might notice above, the “>” in Mallory (Mallor>y). See THIS POST for an explanation of that! If your letters are spaced unevenly with certain fonts, check out the post!

So now on to another PFG shirt I did for my other niece. I want the monogram as big as I can get it and I want to use my 5×7 hoop. As you can see below, Letter Size is 3.00 and everything else is default. The monogram size at these settings is 6.96″ wide to fit the 7″ wide hoop, and 3.00″ tall. Not bad, but I can get it a little bigger. This is Monogram Wizard Plus “Sydney” font.

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Below I adjusted the Letter Width to 85, which “skinnies” up the monogram to 5.85″ wide (still 3″ tall). I can now increase the Letter Size to get the width back up to closer to 7″.

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I bumped the Letter Size up to 3.55 (Width is still 85) and now the monogram width is 7.01″ and 3.55″ tall. Bigger!

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Below I adjusted my Letter Width a little more, down to 80, and Letter Size up to 3.75. NOW my monogram is 6.96″ wide and 3.75″ tall. By making these adjustments, my monogram went from just 3″ tall to 3.75″ tall. It fills the hoop much better and the monogram will be much bigger on the shirt.

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I took a few shots of the shirt as I got it ready to monogram. I marked my center on the back of the shirt (top panel).

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These shirts are “vented” so I inserted a piece of cutaway between the top layer I’m monogramming and the “net vent stuff”.

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On my 6 needle machine, I hoop with the frame inside the shirt. Again, I’m using cutaway on the inside and I am using water soluble on top (just for extra stabilization). I only had precut squares of the solvy so that’s why you see 2 pieces.

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I put the hoop on my machine upside down, so the monogram is rotated upside down and I had to make sure the arm of my machine was inside the 2 layers of shirt! Sorry this part is a little confusing! If you ever try to monogram one of these shirts, this will make sense.

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Here is the finished shirt. When finished I unhoop, trim the excess cutaway stabilizer from the inside and then just pull away all the water soluble from the top.

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I hope that helps! Again, NOT rocket science with the width/letter size adjustments, but if you are a newbie you may not have realized you could make your monograms a smidge bigger!

Filed Under: How To, Software | Tagged: Tagged With: , ,

Towels and Fish

Posted by on June 3, 2013

It’s June already (and this is my 2nd blog post in the past week)!! It’s going to be a great summer! Yesterday I FINISHED every single piece of “customer work” I had to do, so now it’s time to dig in to some other things. I got some great sample blanks at the Everything Applique Conference, so I want to *do* something with them and post about them (coming soon). I also have a pile of samples from EAC I need to sell and a few things to do for Mallory too.

You know how I always say I like to use FILL STITCH when I do towels? Well, I have an exception to the rule. I had a customer bring me these beach towels to monogram, and she specifically said “nothing too thick”. These are from Tarjet I think, and they are cute little towels and also relatively thin. In this case, I DID NOT use fill stitch. I made sure my font was thin enough to do satin stitch. These names pretty much filled the 5×7 hoop, so close to 6.5-7″ wide. In Monogram Wizard Plus you can adjust the boldness (thickness or fatness of the satin stitch) of a font so I did decrease the boldness on the right 2 girl towels. The font is MWP Specs. On the left boy towel, I used MWP Kazoo font and the name wasn’t too thick at this size, so I don’t think I had to adjust the boldness on it. If this is all confusing to you, stay tuned for my next post on Monogram Wizard Plus and adjusting a font’s width and boldness and all that good stuff.

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Specs is a wonky font, so I did the letters in layers and then arranged them all in Sew What Pro. See this post for more info b/c I didn’t take pictures of how to do it.

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Now on to a project I did today for Mallory. I bought this a-line dress/top at an overstock sale several months ago. It was all of like $8 or $10 and was a sample from Red Beans clothing line. It had a monogram on it, but I got it anyway. When I see something monogrammed, I usually see A) if it will come out easily and B) if I can cover it. I did a little bit of both on this one.

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As you can see below, I took out what I could of the monogram ~ mainly the fat parts that I could easily cut (with a seam ripper or small scissors) and pull out. The dress/shirt was fully lined, so I didn’t have access to the back side and bobbin thread and could only take out the monogram from the front which was a little tricky. Anyway, I took out what I could and decided to move on. You can also see where I marked the approximate center of the monogram. My plan was to cover it with an applique!

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As I said, it was fully lined (covering the back of the monogram) and I didn’t want to mess with the lining.

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I used medium cutaway stabilizer on the back side of the dress and hooped it so that the monogram was pretty centered in the hoop. You want to make sure the applique will cover the entire monogram.

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I chose our Fat Fish Design to cover the monogram. As you can see below, I sewed the marking stitch first. I then had an idea… what if I cut out the seersucker fabric and monogram INSIDE the marking stitch LEAVING the lining in tact. Had I thought of this before, I would not have wasted 20 minutes trying to take out part of the monogram. See my post on Layering Fabrics in an Applique for more info on this.

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As you can see, I trimmed closely inside the fish. The white you see is the lining of the dress/shirt (I’m honestly not sure which it is, dress or top, but we plan to wear this w/ shorts).

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I am using red Ta Dot fabric because I have a pair of little ruffle shorts she is going to wear this with. I use Heat N Bond Lite on the fabric (of course).

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Ready for the tackdown stitch!

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Here I have trimmed the fabric closely. I love my Gingher 4″ curved scissors! It will then stitch the eye and around the fish and I stopped the machine and left off the fin that is shown on this design.

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Here is the finished outfit! I got the shorts from Doodles Boutique. This will be great for the summer AND it’s a little patriotic for the 4th of July!

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I love this fish!

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I also did this Fat Fish last year to match a pair of shorts I got at the same overstock sale! I believe the shorts are from Red Beans too!

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Lastly, I posted on Facebook yesterday that you can make pretty much any design patriotic by using red, white & blue fabric, like in the outfit above. Here is also a pic of our Popsicle Trio design done in RW&B fabrics! Have a great week!

popsicle trio rwb 500

Filed Under: Applique Cafe, Design, How To | Tagged: Tagged With: ,

Dear Diary,

Posted by on November 13, 2012

It has been wayyyyyyyy too long since my last entry. Life is crazy. Love, Rosemary

Gosh, how do weeks go by without me sharing with you all the excitement of my life? Easily I tell you! A) because like I said, life is crazy. B) because said life is not that exciting. This past weekend we went on our annual camping trip to FDR State Park near Callaway Gardens, over yonder in Georgia. The first year we went, there were 3 families and we only took Browder. Mallory may not have been alive at the time? Anyway, our group has grown over the years and this past weekend we had 10, yes 10 families, camp out for the weekend. You may count 11 here, but that’s only because an extra family met us at Callaway Gardens for the day Sunday. 10 families = 22 KIDS! The Gulledge camping motto is “We only bring some of our kids” (seriously, we have a plaque). Mallory did not go, but maybe next year. We had a BLAST!! We’re talking tents, campfires, smores, tromping through the woods to the bath house, and every meal with 42 people. This is something that hopefully these kids will never forget!

This was our “Church in the woods” service Sunday morning. How could you NOT spend 3 days in the woods and not PRAISE GOD!! It was really beautiful! I am a city girl all the way, but it’s almost a necessity to escape to the woods for a few days at least ONCE a year.

 

Remember the “I will flush” saga of October 2012. Fast forward to November, and you will find the “I will hang my towel up” saga of 2012. I thought it was working, until this morning I found a wet towel on the window seat that had been there all night long….. This is my exciting life!

I have been doing quite a bit of work the past few weeks and here are some of the tees I’ve done. I’m about to wrap things up for a while (no more work). This is the Embroidery-Boutique Chunky Alphabet that I use and post about a lot. I used Monogram Wizard Plus Library font for the E & J beside it. I use this font a lot as well!

Here is the Applique Cafe Dinosaur 3 design and I can’t really capture in a photo how cute this is on a red shirt! These are Old Navy tees btw. They are super soft!

Our new Zig Zag Reindeer design which is super cute and zig zag is a lot faster than satin. This was a tricky shirt to do ~ I chose to center the reindeer with the initials off to the right side. It’s easier said than done b/c my machine automatically centers the entire design. More on that later if I ever figure out how I did it!

Our Dog Truck design. I love red and brown on gray!

 Lastly, here are some burp cloths I did recently for a friend who was giving them as a gift to twins. This is our Flower 5 design and it looks great w/ initials inside (Monogram Wizard Plus “Master Circle”). I use Master Circle ALL THE TIME as well! This fabric is Robert Kaufman Bright Spot On.

 Thanksgiving is next week! Applique Cafe is having a “Give Thanks Sale”. Thanksgiving designs are 1/2 off (Halloween too ~ they are categorized together). The rest of our designs are 35% off through Thursday, November 29th ~ www.appliquecafe.com

Above is our Frame Patch 2 design with MWP Camp font. I just got the Camp font not too long ago and I like it! Here are some of our new designs we’ve listed recently, and we hope to have several more ready this week!

You can find all of our new designs by clicking ALL DESIGNS on our website.

Filed Under: Applique Cafe, Design, Family, Misc | Tagged: Tagged With: , ,
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